Freud’s Last Session

The excellent Freud’s Last Session program reveals that first-time-ever producer Adam Liberman, a seriously experienced lawyer, travelled to New York to acquire the Australian rights for this award-winning off-Broadway play. You’ve got to admire his taste and his determination while worrying about his bank balance.

Mark St Germain’s challenging 80 minute two-hander seems the wrong fit for the wide expanse of the Theatre Royal stage, more usually a home for crowd-pulling musicals. After publicity expenses, a two week run is unlikely to pay even for the excellent book-lined set (by Mark Thompson) which includes not only Freud’s famous psychiatrist’s couch but many examples of his collection of antiquities.

But all power to Liberman! A true theatre fan, he has put his money where his heart is and it would be churlish to wish him anything but good fortune.

The play transpires on September 3, 1939, between BBC radio broadcasts of Prime Minister Chamberlain declaring war on Germany and King George lisping his best wishes to the Empire. In his London study Sigmund Freud, 83, founder of psychoanalysis, committed atheist in the final stages of a particularly awful mouth cancer, meets Oxford University professor C.S. Lewis, 41, committed Christian, destined to write the Chronicle of Narnia novels.

Under Adam Cook’s unobtrusive direction, these brilliant minds trade intellectual blows while the seriousness of Freud’s condition becomes clear. As also does the critical danger to London.

Douglas Hansell is suitably stiff-backed and repressed as Lewis; Henri Szeps is touching and occasionally explosive as Freud, aware of his fast-arriving and painful end. It was probably a mistake to have Szeps wear an ill-fitting earpiece: he handled his prompts well but scene rhythms were often lost.

Frank Hatherley 

Photographer: © Mel Koutchavlis.