Stage review A bold and dark 'what if' that puts the Führer on the couch

A bold and dark 'what if' that puts the Führer on the couch

- Mark Lawson

If there were a theatre prize for grabby titles, Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran would win it. Much as Tom Stoppard's Travesties - spotting that James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara coincided in Zurich in 1917 - audaciously fantasised their interactions, Marks and Gran even more boldly posit that, if Adolf Hitler had seen a shrink in Vienna in the early 20th century, it might have been Sigmund Freud.

Beginning with a title-explaining scene in which an Austrian mother seeks advice on her young son's nocturnal bedwetting and nightmares, Dr Freud Will See You Now, Mrs Hitler contrives encounters across three decades: with Hitler as a patient; house-painter; hiker near Freud's summer house in Berchtesgaden (giving, it is implied, ideas to Hitler); war-wounded corporal; and, ultimately, Führer.