Description
Book Synopsis1938. Hampstead, London. Sigmund Freud has fled Nazi-occupied Austria and settled in leafy Swiss Cottage. At eighty-two-years-old, he aims to spend his final days in peace. However, when Salvador Dalí turns up to discover a less-than-fully dressed woman in the closet, peace becomes somewhat elusive . . . An acknowledged modern classic, Terry Johnson's hilarious farce explores the fall-out when two of the twentieth century's most brilliant and original minds collide. It touches on many themes including Nazi Germany, the Surrealist movement, Judaism, Freud's theories of the unconscious mind, family relationships, life and death, and love and loss. Johnson's celebrated play raises intriguing questions about Freud's radical revision of his theories of hysteria.
Trade ReviewTerry Johnson is a writer of cracking acting parts, and one of the critically cherished few who can build characters and action from a thematic starting point * Independent on Sunday *
Terry Johnson is that rare creature: a moralist with wit. He writes with responsible gaiety * Guardian *
One of the most brilliantly original and entertaining new plays I have seen in years: wild, weird and funny, serious, compassionate and shocking, blasphemous and reverential, intellectual and frivolous, a factual fantasy, a demented farce, a black nightmare. * The Sunday Times *
Uniting flurries of brilliantly developed farce with fizzing intellectual slapstick * Independent *
