The Hysteric
Performed in 2011 at Triskelions Arts in Brooklyn, NY. Toured the Canadian International Fringe Festival: Winnipeg, Clear Lake, Edmonton and Victoria. BEST OF FEST winner at the Winnipeg Fringe.
Written by Carol Lee Sirugo
Performed by Jonathan Kaplan and Carol Lee Sirugo
Directed by Bryan Foley
Reviews
CBC MANITOBA, Winnipeg MB
★★★★
It's the late 1800's in upstate New York. A man takes a bride for her sizable dowry then sets to convincing her she's losing her mind so he can have her committed. Filled with lots of physical comedy, some creative sound design, and wickedly clever use of props, The Hysteric is a ton of fun.
But amidst the silliness, the wonky accents, and the deliberately bad puns, the show also has something worthwhile to say about all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways bad men infantilize women and condition them to distrust their own voice. As the young bride tells her rubber room cell mate, "I must have done something awfully wrong, or else why would I be here."
It's a thought-provoking dose of medicine, with plenty of sugar to help it go down.
— Dean Jenkinson
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, Winnipeg MB
★★★★
They say marriage can drive you insane, but this is ridiculous.
New Yorkers Jonathan Kaplan and Carol Lee Sirugo play unnamed newlyweds — along with numerous other characters — in this two-person comedy thriller that Edgar Allan Poe might have written if he were schooled in the humour of Monty Python.
Sirugo plays the young bride of Kaplan, a shady sort who hypnotizes and drugs his wife to get her into bed, but he doesn’t want to sleep with her. Throughout the night the woman hears horrific screaming and moaning, and in the morning things in the house are missing. Is she going mad?
The show included sharp dialogue, well-timed atmospheric sound effects and a clever use of props. Kaplan and Sirugo have a great chemistry together and the different characters are easily identifiable, but some asides to the audience could be spoken more loudly for people in the back.
The Hysteric is a crazy good hour of your time.
— Rob Williams
UPTOWN MAGAZINE, Winnipeg MB
★★★★
New Yorkers Jonathan Kaplan and Carol Lee Sirugo's darkly comic mash up of A Doll House and Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion is just as innovative as it sounds. Throughout the hour, the pair skillfully portrays 15 different characters including a devious husband plotting to drive his rich young wife insane, and the twisted, pun happy servants. Credit must also go to the imaginative sound design by director Brian Foley; the eerie screams, moans and clock chimes almost become a character in themselves. The age of Victorian women not having a voice may be long gone, but the message of the show still rings true, even if its closing song I’m Every Woman is a bit too on the nose.
— Amanda Stefaniuk
TIMES COLONIST, Victoria BC
★★★½
New Yorker Carol Lee Sirugo is the creator of The Hysteric, an energetic satire of 19th-century gothic literature à la the Brontës and Edgar Allan Poe.
Sirugo plays an innocent young woman who's just married the mysterious fellow (Jonathan Kaplan). In total, the pair play a whopping 15 characters. The plot hinges on the husband's fiendish plan to cheat his wife out of her money by having her committed to an insane asylum as a "hysteric." This plays on the curious Victorian notion that women, by virtue of their sex, were prone to nervous fits that could degenerate into full-blown lunacy.
The most appealing part of this comedy is the performers' command of physicality and stagecraft. Both have strong physical theatre/clowning backgrounds, which clearly shows on stage. Props and other devices are used skillfully and cleverly (a screen is flipped around, for example, to reveal Sirugo "asleep" on a horizontal bed).
The plot line does meander too much — at times it seems to drift into dead-ends. Kaplan, while physically gifted, needs to sharpen his articulation. Yet overall, this is a well-conceived, tightly constructed show offered by performers who know their art. Worth seeking out.
—AC
The Hysteric photo credit: Jim Moore