The Divided Laing
Arcola Theatre
Reviewed on Monday 23rd November 2015
★★★
Kingsley Hall in London’s East End must have been an interesting place in the late 1960s. It was there that Dr R D Laing established a commune-like psychiatric facility that rejected contemporary treatments of the mentally ill in favour of a more radical, more humane approach. Instead of electric shocks, insulin comas and lobotomisation, Laing wanted to provide a place where people were “free to explore their psychic being unhindered” or, in layman’s terms, “free to flip out and go crazy”.
