12-30 Jan 2005. Directed by American actor John Malkovich and written by Therry Johnson, Hysteria is a narrative on the meeting that took place between Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dal in London in 1938. Dal had long hoped to expose his peculiar theories to the father of psychoanalysis, who initially declined. The production was first staged in 2002 in Chicago and has since played to audiences in New York, Paris and Barcelona prior to its arrival in the Spanish capital. Malkovich, who has also directed for the silver screen, here marshals the talents of his Spanish actors Enrique Alcides and Isabel Serrano who perform the lead roles. Both agile of mind but coming from completely different cultural spheres, the play captures the friction between the two. Freud is rumoured to have had his views confirmed regarding the sanity, or lack thereof, of Dal and by association the Surrealist movement.