Hysteria

Synopsis

A site-specific performance in The Great Hall at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. This performance takes place in the evocative surroundings of The Great Hall at St Bart’s Hospital. It explores the lives of 19th century women interred in mental institutions, often erroneously, and looks at the connections between their experiences and those of women today. How have conceptions of abnormality changed? What unites women across the centuries? Like ghosts from a former time, the five performers interact with female members of the audience, gently questioning them about their lives. An engaging, tender and charming production.

Latest User Review

Kel Varnsen - 9 June 2008:

This sets out to portray the lives of women incarcerated in an asylum in the 19th century, bossed about by a grim matron. Male and female audience members sit searately, facing each other across the performance space, while the all-female cast interact with female audience members. This creates a massive problem (among many others) in that the audience members are required to interact to quite an extent, meaning you have non-performers making a significant contribution to the action. Not only is the point of this lost in the general mess of this 'production', it helps to destroy all theatricality - what little there was to start with, that is. The venue is far too opulent to represent an asylum ward, and the acoustics are terrible. There's no interval and the whole thing is rambling, disjointed nonsense. It's not theatre. I'm always up for odd-sounding site-specific events but too often they trade on the quirkyness of the setting and staging, while lacking substance. Stuff like Hysteria gives site-specific work a very bad name....

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