What's it about: After returning to Victorian London, Jago
and Litefoot are approached by the enigmatic Colonel and offered a role they
cannot refuse – investigators by Royal Appointment to Queen Victoria! Their
missions include a mystery on the Suffolk coast where strange things lurk in
the sea mist, an encounter with Freud and a threat to the realm itself… But who
can save Professor Litefoot when he is accused of murder, and no one can be
convinced of his innocence?
Theatrical Fellow: A little peek into the psyche of Henry
Gordon Jago as we get to experience one of his dreams first hand and it appears
to consist of a theatrical performance including Sigmund Freud and a baboon and
everybody appearing on stage naked! The idea of Dr Freud and Jago working
together to uncover the truth behind his dreams was probably enough for the
commissioning script editor to give this story the green light, it is a highly
intoxicating notion and one that is full of imagery that is (as the story
itself suggests) is open to interpretation. He doesn't give much thought to his
family but most theatricals are the same. In one of his dreams he visits his
home on a hot summer but not all of the details are right, it is much grander
than he remembers. His mother (as interpreted by Lisa Bowerman) is a real
dragon of a woman, ranting and raving at him as he tries to appease her. Jago
is capable of restraint on occasion, when he is awake. For Henry the baboon is
a monstrously powerful signifier of repressed desire; the fury he feels towards
his father for abandoning him as a child and the fear he has of the suffocating
influence of his mother.
Posh Professor: He is sad that he cannot do more for Henry
but psychological evaluation and diagnosis is not really his field. When he
talks about being taken to the zoo by Nanny it is clear that Litefoot and Jago
had very different upbringings. He empathises with one of the escaped baboons,
considering they were both born millions of miles away from London and having
both been put through the mangle on several occasions. Once a week his father
would take them to see the Commissioner because he had a pair a boys that were
roughly the same age as his children and they spent every Sunday there.
Litefoot used to dread going but not because of the boys - they were the only
real friends that they had there. No, they had go through a ghastly ritual of
feeding live rats to a baboon in the garden before they left. Her mother hated
the commissioner because he once made a pass at her and would never accompany
them. Litefoot has unexpressed anger about the incident. The two sides of his
nature are exposed in his dreams, Anna Litefoot encapsulating his reason and
the baboon his unreason. The civilised side always seeking to control the fury
of the other.
Great Ideas: Some writers love dropping their audience in
the middle of a tale that has already begun and expect you to catch up. Matthew
Sweet is one such writer and he is one of the few on Big Finish's payroll that
is intelligent enough to guide you along until the proper information can be
dropped in to get you up to speed with what has been going on to reach the
point at which you joined the story. Litefoot is concerned that since they
returned from Suffolk, Jago has been infected by a kind of madness and has
dragged in Dr Freud to peek into his mind and see what is going on. How are we
to judge which desires to act upon or ignore? And yet there are those who would
take it upon themselves to insist upon which ones we should indulge in or not.
Bizarrely, Peggy Mitchell seems to be alive and well in Victorian London and
working as a taxi driver ('Get aat of my cab!'). The thought of somebody
dying in their dreams and never waking up is a terrifying one and a conundrum
that Dr Freud cannot rightly answer. Is that what it is like for people who do
slip away in their sleep? Does their mind take over and dream up a scenario that can display through
imagery a way for them to pass satisfactorily? According to Freud every dream
is a window into wish fulfilment, a visual landscape that expresses what we
want. Lawrence Miles struck upon the imagery of slavering, out of control
baboons breaking loose in Victorian London in the chilling novel The
Adventuress of Henrietta Street and Matthew Sweet utilises the same kind of
imagery in this tale. It almost seems to be a metaphor for the whatever beastly
force is trying to break its way free of Jago's dreams. If our secrets reside
and our true natures are hiding in our unconscious minds, what if you are yet
to determine the nature of our true nature? The madness that has infected Jago
is manifesting itself as a baboon in his dreams and has broken free out into
the real world. For the last few nights both Jago and Freud's dreams have been
following the same script. The madness was shipwrecked on the Suffolk coast,
lost in the fog. The story makes us believe that it is Jago who was infected
when it was Litefoot all along, mastered by its madness. He thought to lift the
monster from his own back and pass the burden onto Jago and all the ape wanted
was to escape. They rushed through the night of the universe and were broken
when they fell but thanks to the a little psychological merging they are whole
again.
Standout Scene: There are lots of wonderful little moments
that take you by surprise but I especially enjoyed the reversal of expectations
at the climax when we realise just what Litefoot's role in this story really
is.
Result: I always say that the three dullest topics that
anybody can talk about are the interpretation of dreams, endlessly banging on
about children and talking about your pets as though they were siblings.
Everybody is guilty of the first, I know a fair few people guilty of the second
and I am one of the worst perpetrators of the third. Return of the Repressed
obsesses about one of these subjects but it doesn't turn out to be a bore at
all. Like The Spirit Trap and The Theatre of Dreams, Return of the Repressed is
a Jago & Litefoot tale that manages to tell an entirely different sort of
adventure from the norm, one which is more like a puzzle box to be figured out
and where reality has to be questioned at every point. Listening to the behind
the scenes featurette is fascinating because both Trevor Baxter and Lisa
Bowerman read the script for this one and were horrified at how out of place
and different it was to anything they had ever done before...but on subsequent
re-reads they saw how it not only slotted in perfectly but also revealed a
great deal about the series' titular characters. I think the audience might
have a similar reaction, sheer incomprehension at first (the mixture of being
dropped in at the middle of the narrative and to then start questioning reality
at every turn is a big ask) but upon giving it another a go with a few salient
facts in place it is actually one of the mot dense and clever pieces the series
has attempted. And I'm saying this after only listening to it once. Getting
both Jago & Litefoot on the psychiatrics couch allows us to discover much
more about both characters, their pasts and important details about their
childhood. Saying that this isn't simply a counselling session, Return of the
Repressed is a story full of nightmarish imagery and soundscapes, moments to
make you laugh and a climax that sees the mystery come together in a very
rewarding way. I was very keen on this madness shared by three: 9/10
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