A story needing to be told that, with some refinement and greater character exploration, has great potential.Rating
Good
Nellie Bly, an absolute trailblazer of America’s Gilded Age, has been the subject of three reviews from me this year. It’s no real coincidence, as I’ve been fascinated to hear of her stories since the first, and after each one, I’ve been keen to know more. This look at her week-long stay at an asylum in the late 1880’s would have been an opportunity to learn more; sadly this didn’t really materialise.
Entering the close confines of the Golden Goose Theatre, most of the night’s cast are already present in the performance area, playing cards and chatting whilst sitting in stark white medical robes on hospital beds: quite a clever way to start. The very basic, low-budget set is present throughout with the aforementioned beds used to great effect from start to finish to create different rooms and scenes.
The four women are soon joined by Nellie Bly (using a pseudonym of Nellie Brown), well characterised by Amy Cash with an impressive East Coast US accent, who’s joining them as their new room-mate. Nellie informs the audience that, on the instructions of her Editor, she is going undercover and faking mental illness to explore the abhorrent conditions and treatment of women in a US asylum.
We see Nellie institutionalised by a judge (Michali Dantes, who does a convincing job throughout of playing misogynistic male authority figures), and the assembled cast do well to keep straight faces as the end of the judge’s gavel flies off after a particularly hard bashing. From here, we start to understand the stories and identities of each of the fellow patients. As this is a compact 60-minute production, some introductions to the characters would have been prudent earlier on, as we only discover as their individual stories unfold that these women were not incarcerated with Nellie at all: they are women throughout history who have all met the same fate, but they would not have actually met each other – or Nellie.
Whilst subtlety and respect have clearly been considered throughout the production to honour the memory and experiences of the women concerned, I feel that with a title of Hysteria and a thoughtful, dramatic flyer given to the audience on entry using the words ‘An asylum out of time’, ‘women out of history’, a little more drama, depth and detail would have galvanised each of their stories and reasons for being sentenced to time in an asylum. It isn’t apparent from the individual performances as to why Sylvia Plath (Anna Coles), Zelda Fitzgerald (Georgia Grant), Moll Flanders (Estelle Cousins) and Marsha P Johnson (Tariye Peterside) are there, especially when Nellie is there as an undercover journalist. It’s only during the final scenes that we are fully introduced and their full names are given, yet even then, the viewer has to find out more from the promotional flyer.
With all of that being said, the ensemble work well together, constructing and de-constructing the set and their beds, with great use of an upright piano for multiple purposes. Lighting and occasional complete darkness enables the group to re-locate and change the scene with ease.
Some difficult, sensitive subjects are tackled here and the production should be praised for the care taken approaching mental health, abuse, misogyny and attempted suicide. Coles handles the attempted suicide of Sylvia Plath well and the same for Cash with a bathing scene for Nellie, overlooked by the intimidating ward orderly (Dantes). However, a scene with Nellie falling into despair and desperate for release really doesn’t convince and an attempted escape from the institution via some pipework draws more humour than drama, with one audience member rather disrespectfully taking a picture or video of the ensemble trying to mop up the leaking water.
This piece has huge potential and the stories of the individual women and their plight needs to be told. I salute the writer, production team and ensemble for bringing this to the fore and hope that with some more character work and structure, this could be a great future piece.
Written by Alexandra Hart
Directed by Emily Phillips
Set & Costume design by Alex Gray & Noga Gilboa
Assistant Direction: Charlotte Hunter
Choreography by Lily Payton
Sound design by Martha Barrow
Lighting design by Tom Beazley
This run of Hysteria is now completed.
