UPDATE: American Stage Artistic Director Todd Olson announced on Facebook today that there will be a performance tonight, Saturday Sept. 22, of Hysteria. Said Olson: "HYSTERIA, the amazing story that plays over and over...plays tonight!"
In his curtain speech before Thursday night's performance of Hysteria at American Stage, board member Matt Conigliaro told the audience that the play would be "surreal." That wasn't much of a surprise, considering the plot involves an encounter between Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dalì. But the description would turn out to be much more accurate than Conigliaro could have known.
As a Norton judge, I wouldn't ordinarily be able to talk about what I saw, but this was not a reviewable performance. The first act began well, but somewhere in the middle it became clear something was wrong — either that or the script had some serious redundancy issues.
As it turned out, there was indeed a problem, but it wasn't the script. Production Stage Manager Karla Hartley stepped onto the stage before the second act to announce that one of the actors was unable to continue, and that the show could not go on.
This afternoon, American Stage explained what happened in a statement cancelling tonight's performance: