2015 - Meanwhile Back on the Couch

Psychiatrist Victor Karleen is financially pressed between the rental of his posh office apartment and his fiancée’s expensive tastes. A colleague has written a best-selling case history book and is now rolling in royalties. Good friend Parker Donnelly has rejected Victor’s similar work because the public is tired of such things and prefers torrid fiction. Needing cash, Victor reluctantly takes on a new patient who, due to love frustration, is grinding out a rip-roaring sex novel. By mistake, his nurse gives the patient’s manuscript to Donnelly believing it to be Victor’s work. Suddenly Victor has an enormous advance royalty check, a Book of the Month Club selection, and a potential Pulitzer Prize. When he discovers that it is his patient’s inviolate confidences and not his clinical casebook that has saved the day, Victor determines to keep his patient crazy until he dreams up the final chapter. Meanwhile, Back on the Couch is fast-paced, hilarious, and zany.


The play features the story of psychiatrist Victor Karleen played by John Siegfried who must find a way to supplement his income to support the expensive tastes of his fiancée, Gabrielle played by Rebecca Reich. After his hope to publish a book of clinical cases falls through, he takes on a new client, Albert Brooke (Mark Gaynor), a rather dull man whose racy dreams give Victor the plot for a steamy new novel that will bring him wealth and fame. When his assistant, Charlotte (Jan Radford) mistakenly gives the manuscript to his publisher (Bill Carroll), Victor is forced to choose between his ethics as a psychiatrist and his desire to make a lot of money. The ensuing story, peopled by Roy, a competitive fellow psychiatrist (Ken Coleman), Albert's dotty grandmother, Dorothea (Monica O'Hagan), and an amorous neighbour named Jingle (Adrianna Wilson), is action-packed to the very end. What will happen to Victor? What choices will he make?

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