‘Hysteria’ Puts Freud on the Couch : Theater review: In this play of debate and farce, the therapist is forced to face his own secrets when confronted about abandoning his theory of hysteria.

Freud was brilliant but he wasn’t perfect. In “Hysteria,” by British playwright Terry Johnson, a woman armed with 1980s notions confronts Freud about mistakes he made in his treatment of female patients, mistakes with tragic results. She does this with anguish and heart--and yet the play is a boulevard farce, one in which Freud gets caught pulling down the pants on a supine Salvador Dali.

In its American premiere, “Hysteria” opened Thursday night at the Mark Taper Forum. An excellent cast negotiates the play’s often uneasy transitions between farce and a passionate discussion of ideas and their consequences. But, despite, or possibly because of, the play’s unwieldy ambitions, “Hysteria” is neither as hilarious nor as thought-provoking as it promises to be. The play is mired in a fascinating construct from which it never breaks free and flies.

Under the direction of Phyllida Lloyd, who also directed the play in London in 1993, an American cast of veteran comedic actors perform with their dependable flair. Hunched and humbled by age, David Margulies is visually perfect as a Freud near death, one who can both engage in a blistering debate about repression and stand quivering with fear that he’ll get caught harboring a naked woman in his closet.

He is attended by his physician, Abraham Yahuda (Kenneth Mars, playing the straight man), and visited by a harmlessly wacky Salvador Dali (Richard Libertini), whose bizarre appearance and overweening narcissism causes an un-politically correct Freud to note, “I don’t think I’ve ever met a more complete example of a Spaniard!”

But Freud’s most consequential visitor is a disturbed young woman named Jessica who introduces herself to him as “your anima.” She demands to be treated immediately, claiming that it won’t take long because she already knows what’s wrong with her. Jessica, it turns out, has come to question Freud about why he abandoned his original theory of hysteria, in which he argued that it was always caused by “a traumatic seduction,” in other words, by childhood molestation, usually by a father.

Freud subsequently claimed that the memories of molestation in his female patients were much more likely to have been fantasies, driven by the unconscious sexual desires of childhood. In the past 20 years, as the commonality of sexual abuse of children has come to light, writers such as Jeffrey Masson, Jane Gallup and Marianne Krull have attacked Freud for changing his mind. Yet these revelations of widespread incest were almost immediately followed by the discovery of false-memory syndrome, of remembering abuse that never took place. In other words, the current debate replays Freud’s own findings just before the turn of the century.

Johnson humanizes that debate through the character of Jessica. He gives Jessica the ultimate satisfaction of tearing from Freud the realization that he too repressed memories of his own father, memories he too could not face, which played a large part in shaping his theories. When he abandoned the seduction theory, according to the play, he abandoned Jessica’s own mother as well, a patient known as Rebecca S.

In a riveting performance by Anna Gunn, Jessica relives her mother’s symptoms--the clawing of her own breast, the gagging--in order to force Freud to see the truth.

He does begin to confront his own secrets, under the guidance of Jessica, who turns from analysand to analyst. But Johnson is never content with one revelation when several are available. In an over-the-top and visually fantastical ending, Freud confronts all manner of revelation, biblical in proportion and Dali-esque in form.

Ambitious, entertaining, oddly unsatisfying, “Hysteria” is a patchwork of history and ideas that is cousin to Steve Martin’s “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” The play is so full of jokes and images and personalities that it fails to assemble one completely new personality all its own.

* “Hysteria,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2:30 p.m. Ends Sept. 3. $28-$35.50. (213) 365-3500, (714) 740-2000, TDD (213) 680-4017. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

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David Margulies: Sigmund Freud Anna Gunn: Jessica Kenneth Mars: Abraham Yahuda Richard Libertini: Salvador Dali With: Jack Axelrod, Fiona Hale, BobbyRuth Mann, Liann Pattison, Marra Racz, Katherine Talent. A Mark Taper Forum production. By Terry Johnson. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Sets and costumes Mark Thompson. Lights Chris Parry. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Music Karl Fredrik Lundeberg. Production stage manager Mary Michele Miner.