Plays 2: Imagine Drowning / Hysteria / Dead Funny

by Terry Johnson, Nicholas Wright (Introduction)

Terry Johnson's most recent plays collected in a second volume and introduced by the author

This second volume of Johnson's collected plays includes Hysteria, in which one of Freud's earliest "cases" returns to haunt the psychoanalyst but finds Salvador Dali hiding in the cupboard; Dead Funny, a comedy about Benny Hill, impotence, sex therapy and the English sense of humour - Eleanor wants what Richard won't give her, Richard wants to be left in peace, Benny would rather rest in peace, but for tonight, at least, his fans won't let him; Imagine Drowning in which a journalist disappears while covering a protest at Sellafield - when his wife sets out to find him two weeks later, she stays at the same guesthouse and encounters the same bizarre collection of characters including the wife of a mass murderer, an ex-astronaut beach bum and a wheel-chair bound activist.

 

Genres: Plays

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 1998

About the author

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Reviews

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three multi-faceted, startlingly imaginative, brilliantly original plays from a severely underrated playwright. Johnson seizes the theatrical opportunities that most other playwrights fear are too risqué.

'Imagine Drowning' is structurally fascinating; a strange, hypnotic nightmare that also manages to be terrifyingly realistic. In 'Hysteria', a madcap farce quickly becomes a frightening study into the human psyche. And with 'Dead Funny' we have a seemingly harmless Ayckbourn-esque set-up that turns unexpectedly dark.