Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2004

Psychotherapy Live
Co2

Munira Mirza

Lisa Levy is neither a trained psychotherapist, nor a trained actor. This production seems to fall between the cracks of the amateur nature of both. Despite the moments of good humour and the potential of a good idea, the show is not quite a successful comedy performance nor an effective therapy workshop.

Before the performance, the audience is given a form to fill out, asking them a few basic personal facts, such as their order of birth, whether they prefer friends of family for 'having fun', and their marital status. Lisa then enters on stage dressed in a wacky red suit and thick rimmed glasses, speaking with that classic accent of neurosis, the New York twang of Woody Allen. She asks the audience (small enough and surprisingly willing to work as a therapy group) to volunteer to lie on the couch and talk through their 'issues'. In Britain we're supposed to have a stiff upper lip, Lisa says, and not be as over-emotional as New Yorkers. But as our volunteers show, we too are well rehearsed in the cultural script of (pop)psychotherapy. Perhaps the show's only real insight is that the therapy culture doesn't originate on the couch or in the clinic, but outside, in our everyday cultural lives.

The show reveals some of the more basic truisms of the therapy culture. People's minor middle class issues are in fact quite dull. More to the point, talking them through with a group of strangers in an Oprah Winfrey style format is probably not that helpful to the patient. You get a lot of homespun wisdom about what to say to your partner/mother/friend to deal with a problem, but this is more akin to agony aunt magazine columns than genuine psychological probing.

The show took a possibly good concept but does not develop it far enough. You can't tell quite if you're part of an exercise in satire or really trying to help Jim deal with his overbearing mother. You walk out not quite convinced you've done either.

Till 30 August