Mary Barnes

This harrowing new drama by the author of Nicholas Nickleby is based on the true story of an English mental patient, and is a scorching indictment of "traditional" methods of treating the mentally ill. Mary Barnes, diagnosed as a hopeless schizophrenic, has spent much of her life in mental hospitals, where she was kept in padded cells and drugged and shocked into numbness. She is finally placed in an alternative community for the mentally ill, run by psychiatrists who oopose drug and shock treatment. There, she is put back on the road to recovery. A recent success on the London stage, and in the U.S. at the famed Long Wharf Theatre.