Six people gather in a locked room, overnight for ‘Encounter Therapy’ that promises to excavate, and therefore improve, their lives. They get more than they bargain for when Joe Fell savagely exposes their real social and sexual secrets in this send-up of American group therapy.
Its author, Bernard Farrell, explains where he got the inspiration to write this comedy-drama; “I took a yellow cab to a remote part of New York City. I walked up four flights of stairs to a chained and bolted door, beyond which (I would soon find out) sat a group of people eager to ‘relax, relate and communicate.’ At that point, numbed by terror, I think I may have already begun to plot ‘Dr. Fell.’ I assumed (correctly), that there must be many worthwhile ‘Encounter Groups’ run by caring and qualified facilitators. But there were also those run by ruthless opportunists, and I knew that these were the kind that I would one day succeed in satirising.”