Mrs. Klein

Melanie Klein, a psychoanalyst from Vienna, settled in London in 1926, and lived and practiced there until her death in 1960. One of the harshest critics of her hypotheses was her own daughter Melitta Schmideberg. Nicholas Wright’s play is set in London in 1934 and shows the conflict between mother and daughter. The catalyst of this argument is the young emigrant Paula, who is skilled at turning the battle between the two women to her own ends. “A intensively acted psychological drama that draws its appeal from the profession of the three women: all three of them are wily psychoanalysts. Ingemo Engström stages this chamber drama in remembrance of Melanie Klein, a rival of Anna Freud, as an attempt to convey both intimacy and distance.” (Fischer Film Almanach 1996)