FREUD IN THE WAITING ROOM

ANALYSIS #3

FREUD IN THE WAITING ROOM

In her play The Waiting Room sand-up comic Lisa Loomer takes a darkly funny look at the dangers encountered on the path to beauty and perfection. Loomer writes in a very different voice than a man would as she presents three women in a doctor’s waiting room from different historical periods killing themselves to look beautiful. Victoria is a prim Nineteenth Century English woman trussed up in a whalebone corset wearing a bustle who is prone to "hysterical" fits. Her husband believes she has "had too much education" so he has arranged for her to have her ovaries removed. Forgiveness from Heaven is a Chinese woman from the 1700s who believes her tiny bound feet make her desirable in the eyes of men. One of her toes has just fallen off. The third woman is Wanda, thoroughly modern. She has had a lot of cosmetic surgery done and is now suffering serious complications from her three breast augmentations. Loomer cleverly uses literature, a book by Freud that one of her characters is reading, to encourage her audience to psychoanalyze her characters and themselves as they find Freud in the waiting room.

First, Victoria's husband, who wants her ovaries removed, denounces the Chinese as barbaric, while the husband of the Chinese woman who adores his wife's bound feet, denounces the English as barbaric. By juxtaposing time periods and using earthy humor Loomer both comically and tragically shows how little has changed over time. Victoria hides her book by Freud from her husband because her husband believes her desire to educate herself has caused her ovaries to atrophy and has given her hysteria. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that her corset is forcing her uterus out of her vagina. Loomer amplifies the serious nature and accentuates the help psychoanalysis would be with comedy – she gives Victoria a tic whenever she says the word “husband.”

In Scene 2 Wanda is absorbed in a Glamour Magazine and Victoria comes into the waiting room distraught wanting Wanda to run downstairs to Barnes and Nobel to get her another copy of Freud because, “while she and her husband were discussing Freud’s theories . . . her husband quite accidentally, of course . . . dropped Freud. . . into the fire” (48). She asks Wanda to hurry, because she “wants to finish Freud by [her] appointment” (49). When Wanda is curious Victoria admits she bit her husband’s nose and now he’s wondering if “a few teeth might not be removed as well” (49). Like Freud, Victoria is willing to believe her problems are in her mind, but that she thinks she’ll have all the answers before her doctor’s appointment intensifies the comedic drama. Although desperate for freedom, Victoria is still wearing the corset that the doctor told her is, “compressing [her] stomach, dislocating the kidneys, crushing [her] liver, and constricting [her] heart.” But, she says, about her outfit, “it is pretty isn’t it” (49).

The dramatic impact is also intense with Loomer’s unique blend of love, despair, and reality in the characters Forgiveness from Heaven and Wanda. Although these characters don’t consider Freud, they are prime examples of his theories. For instance, Forgiveness is actually proud that the stench in the office comes from her rotting feet. She says, “I would wash them but my husband, he’s crazy for the smell. Likes to eat watermelon seeds from the toes. Almonds. (Delighted.) Dirt” (12). Forgiveness and her husband sound like two year olds to me. I can only imagine the psycho-sexual life or childhood memories awakened in this couples relationship, but they are thought provoking. Tiny feet . . . desirable in her father’s eyes . . . hmmmm.
Loomer describes Wanda as, “A modern gal from Jersey. Forty. Enormous breasts and perfected everything else . . . ballsy . . . but as vulnerable as she appears streetwise, and smarter than she’s gone out of her way to look” (7). As the play is ending in an emotionally charged scene (By now I’m glad the play is almost over because the scenes are emotionally exhausting as well.) Wanda is considering which of the terrible options available to her she should chose to treat her breast cancer. She realizes her whole family has died of cancer. She says, “My dad never got to see me. . . pretty. (Forces a smile.) Well, hey I wouldn’t want him to see me like this now would I?” (69,70).

Aha!

Aha what?

I’m not sure, but I’m meeting Freud in The Waiting Room again.

Works Cited
Loomer, Lisa. The Waiting Room. Dramatists Play Service Inc: New York, N.Y. 1998.