Hysteria

Terry Johnson's career has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. Hysteria, a wildly original analytical farce about Sigmund Freud and infantile seduction that puts the analyst in the psychiatrist's chair, was one of the great Royal Court plays of the last decade. This century his major contribution to theatre has been to direct Jerry Hall in The Graduate.

What this revival of Hysteria shows is that it is possible to have fun in the theatre and at the same time be intellectally stimulating and emotionally touching. You can even do it with naked women. In Hysteria they keep coming out of the closet of the dying Freud's morphine-fuelled mind.

At least one does: Jessica, the daughter of one of Freud's female "hysterics", Rebecca S, whom he had treated and cured when he discovered that her mental illness was caused by having been orally raped by her father. But a year later, he abandoned his so-called seduction theory, arguing instead that the stories of abuse he had been told by so many women were not memories but fantasies.

In Johnson's mixture of fact and fiction, Freud's recantation has tragic consequences for both Rebecca and her daughter. But why did he retract? Was Freud attempting to save a career that looked as if it was about to be wrecked on the fury and indignation of Vienna's upright citizens, who didn't like being told that they had been routinely raping their daughters? Or did he have other motives, rather closer to home?

Johnson brilliantly mixes fact with fiction and there are good performances all round, but particularly by Guy Henry as Salvador Dali. However, Loveday Ingram's production never quite solves the design demands of the play or realises fully its potential for farce.

But this is a brilliant firework of a play, which reminds that even a hackneyed dramatic form such as farce can delve into our dream lives, and be intellectually teasing; and most importantly that therapy can only be as honest as its practitioners.

• Until October 28. Box office: 01214 3781312.