Word: freuded
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Miss Stanley still hasn't arived in Act I, Scene II, and we see instead a family reunion of all the Freuds. With the hugging and kissing, one is reminded of the Trapp Family Singers. But after that, the play settles down to an effective depiction of Freud's first psycho-analysis and his struggles to have his theories accepted...
Before her appearance, things are going pretty badly, Act I, Scene 1 takes place in 1938, almost 40 years after the body of the action, as Freud and his wife prepare to evacuate their Vienna flat. This seems pointless, especially when nothing later on refers back to it. Well, almost nothing. As the curtain rises on the last scene, the audience sees the flat as it looked in the beginning, with most of the furniture gone and the bookcases empty. At least, one would expect somebody to come on and say, "Who was that masked man anyway?" and somebody else...
...second act, Freud gives Elizabeth the treatment. The doctor has an electrical current machine which is utterly useless, and he works it on Miss Stanley to prove that her illness has a mental cause. The instrument is an elongated vibrator, and when Freud applies it to the painful area, Elizabeth's thigh, she squeals something like, "It feels good ... ooh ... more, more." I don't know how psychological this is supposed to be, but it's pretty weird, let me tell...
...third act, except for the closing scene, is quite good. Steven Hill, as Freud, is at his best here, but never quite decides how he is going to talk. Most of the time his lines are spoken in a clipped, machine gun manner that is somewhat disturbing...
...supporting players, Lili Darvas, as Freud's hateful, race-conscious mother, stands out. Salome Jens, his wife, seems a bit confused as to whether she is supposed to be jealous of Elizabeth, mad at Sigmund, or loyal, and she generally has a look which can only be described as miserably bland. Sam Wanamaker does not make a clear impression in his portrayal of Freud's colleague...