>>REVIEW
WHY FREUD FAINTED
Runs until February 17
Written by David Rhymer in collaboration with Vanessa Porteous
PlayRites Festival
Alberta Theatre Projects
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Why Freud Fainted takes as its point of departure an archetypal moment in the lives of two of the most influential and iconic thinkers of the last century. That’s one big, ambitious bite for a new play to take. Fortunately, both the play and its performers have the necessary chops.
Sigmund Freud’s legendary faint in the presence of Carl Jung, his younger colleague and sometime protégé, really happened. In fact, according to most sources, it happened more than once. Of course, Freud was famous for excavating the "deeper" (read sexual) reason for every last facet of his patients’ behaviour. This play gives him a whopping dose of his own medicine. Just what was it about Jung, it wonders, that so distressed or discombobulated Freud? Jung was, after all, like a son to him – he even called Freud "Papa." Could Freud have been experiencing some of the repressed desires he so convincingly ascribed to his patients?
It is a play of ideas, most definitely. But co-creators David Rhymer and Vanessa Porteous have sagely opted for a decidedly undidactic approach to the material. Cut to New York, 1920. Miss O and Miss J, members of the Heterodoxy Club – a progressive women’s-only outfit whose motto is "The only taboo is taboo itself" – have decided to explore the friendship and ideas of the two famous psychoanalysts in what they call "an Instructive, Amorous, and Amusing Musical Evening including Songs, Scenes and Interludes." To this end, they have taken the unusual step of inviting two male guests, Mr. K and Mr. V, local experts on Freud and Jung, respectively, to participate.
As you can imagine, the evening that ensues is by turns very bawdy, very silly and very deep. The ensemble cast of Onalea Gilbertson, Jamie Konchak, David van Belle and Duval Lang do an excellent job with their double-edged roles. Most of the time, we can perfectly believe that this is a quartet of well-meaning intellectual amateurs more or less cross-eyed (though not cross-legged) with complex desires of their own. The foursome’s scenes and songs perfectly capture the period, employing intimate theatrical devices including burlesque, tableaux and, in one scene, gorgeously faux-native masks. But there are also moments when the characters and the famous people they’re "playing" mesh completely, and these are mesmerizing. In a scene the group calls "The Story of Dora," Miss J (Konchak) steps into the skin of Freud’s most famous patient. By turns seductive and heartbreakingly childlike, Dora is a formidable foil to Freud’s careful persona of scientific (if, in Mr. K’s hands, extremely winsome) cool-headedness, and this segment puts flesh and blood on the tension between intellect and impulse that runs through the play. As a result, the passionate arguments the scenes provoke among the group (Miss O feels Freud violated Dora’s mind, for example, while Miss J is convinced that he cured her) feel vital and unforced.
Miss O and Mr. V, in turn, step into the characters of Jung and Sabina Spielrein, a patient with whom he had a notorious affair. Meandering songs like "Only love knows love" don’t do much to quicken the pulse here (bring back "The Clitty Ditty!"). But Gilbertson fairly crackles with sinuous sexuality, and van Belle’s Mr. V is an intriguing mix of pomposity and innocence that surely must have been part of the paradox of Jung himself. A chillingly funny ensuing scene, in which Jung falls under the sway of the romantic, ridiculous "blood and soil" movement so key to the rise of National Socialism in Germany, shows just how significant Jung’s fixation on love and all its attendant abstractions soon became.
Roughly half the songs, all written by Rhymer, are a delight. The other half – well, the play’s on the long side, is it not? I applaud the rise of the witty musical of the mind. But each of the songs should have to fight for its life. Some of those here, such as the deliberately icky one that begins act two ("Thank heaven above the world is in love with a girl who’s in love with a boy"), must go. There are too many excellent moments in this play for such dead weight.
What this play does well – extremely well – is give life to complex, intellectual arguments while refusing to diminish their complexity. As much as I enjoyed the characters here, it’s the ideas that really sing. The play clearly draws from a vast wealth of primary sources on Jung and Freud, yet these are so seamlessly written into the scenes that no detail ever feels included just because it was too "important" to leave out. We explore everything from homoeroticism to misogyny to anti-Semitism, but we never feel as if someone is preaching to us. The subplot, involving the intrigues and egos of the Heterodoxy Clubbers themselves, provides wry commentary on the Freud/Jung material, nicely showing the futility of parcelling humans into either/or packages. Porteous and Rhymer’s script is a gigantic accomplishment.
So, too, is the current production. Terry Gunvordahl’s lighting and set design is typically masterful, moving us effortlessly among the different settings, periods and tones of the play. (Those bustier-and-skirt silk chairs alone deserve some kind of award.) Deneen McArthur’s costumes are deliciously clever – with emphasis on the delicious. The musical ensemble of Rhymer, Morag Northey-Taylor and Celene Yohemes provides a perfect, engaging complement to the proceedings. Labour of love or product of obsessive appetite – in this case, who cares? Sometimes a good play is just a good play. |
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