63. “In Treatment”

A comedy in three acts by Max Dreyer
Performance at the Berliner Theater, Berlin

The main character in this comedy is a fashionista. She doesn't go in for hats with stuffed birds. That would be too old-fashioned for her. A real modern headgear for a woman is the doctor's hat, which she wears with true feminine coquetry. With the dignity that this hat gives her, she has the power to say all sorts of clever things about human prejudices to the respectable middle-class women of a small town on the Baltic Sea, who have not yet caught up with the latest fashions, at a coffee party to which she invites them. She also has the power to bid her bridegroom farewell, because, although he does not care whether his wife wears a doctor's hat or a hat with stuffed birds, he will not allow her, like a midwife, to go into houses and treat people. But she certainly wants to free the good country folk from all kinds of ills. They do not put up with this. They treat the Fräulein Doktor as an immoral person. The landlady even wants to chase her out of the house. A young gynecologist finds the right way out. He has no practice because the bourgeois provincials don't want an unmarried gynecologist; she has no practice because she lacks male protection. The simplest thing would be for the two of them to marry. And they do. But only as a pretense. For some mysterious reason, any sensual communion between the two is ruled out for the time being. They each have a bedroom to themselves. It is highly platonic. Only an old uncle, who comes on stage at every possible and impossible opportunity, talks about the future children, and the Fräulein Doktor's old aunts and an elderly bride make all kinds of mysterious allusions to sex.

But everything turns out well. Because the old aunts and spinsters believe the two are really married, they run to them and let them treat them. Because the young doctor knows, despite the platonic behavior of his married half, that things must take their natural course after all, he lets his wife fidget. He "treats" her so that she may be converted from her Platonism to a healthy sensuality. He achieves his purpose: the natural female instincts prevail. Oh, my Laura Marholm! You are right after all. You have always said it: man is the content of woman.

I don't have much to say about this comedy. I was terribly bored. The psychological impossibility of the characters was horrible. But there are also people who laughed at the contrasts achieved at the expense of all healthy psychology. Perhaps they are right and I am wrong. What is the point of having acquired a little bit of psychological observation? It only spoils the taste for bad plays.

The acting was excellent. Mrs. Auguste Prasch-Grevenberg played the coquettish fashionista with the doctor's hat excellently, and Mr. Sommerstorff was brilliant in his difficult practice. He has learned all the tricks to free people from evil Platonism. Mr. Formes as the comic uncle was delightful. The smaller roles also found appropriate representatives.