STAGE REVIEW : ‘Freud’ a Skimpy Analysis of a Complex Personality

“I wanted to own a piece of science,” insists Sigmund Freud in Lynn Roth’s one-man show about the inventor of psychoanalysis at the Comedy Store Playhouse. It’s an indication of the personality of the good doctor, but it’s practically the only one the author gives us.

In spite of a fine, detailed period grouping of set pieces by Dena Roth and an intricate and evocative lighting design--uncredited--Roth’s “Freud” portrait looks like a snapshot. And a smiling one at that. She invests him with humor. There’s a funny letter from a woman about penis envy and a good laugh from a joke about sadomasochism, but Roth never lets the character break out of what appears to be Freud’s conscious public facade. The likeness is shallow enough not to overburden a junior high class.

“Freud” tells us about his experiments with cocaine, his trouble getting the title “professor,” the steps he took from hypnosis to analysis. It tells us about the friends and the traitors who stormed out. It mentions his family, but only as furniture around which he works, and it even lets us hear part of his speech announcing his revolutionary theories and the laughter it caused.

It’s not much for actor Harold Gould to chew on. Rarely is there a clue to the complicated man behind the legend, the inner turmoils that led him to the path he followed, nor is there a hint of the neuroses that have been attributed to him. Gould is given no more to work with than a doc with a kind stage-side manner, and he’s too good an actor to be left this hungry.

His flawless performance makes what it can of Roth’s encyclopedic chronology, but he has only Freud’s continuing battle against anti-Semitism about which to get angry. Like too many one-person evenings about historical characters--the mold was broken with Emlyn Williams’ Dickens and Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain--the writing expects us to be satisfied with a minimum of exploration. As actor Lionel Stander once said of a Broadway play, “It ain’t got no underneat.’ ”

There is a Freud of darker shades and stronger dramatic weave waiting in the wings. Underneat’ this simplistic image is the driven, complex mind we really want to know about.

At 1445 N. Las Palmas, Hollywood; Thursdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 & 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m.; ends Nov. 4. $15-$20; (213) 466-1767.