Return of the Repressed (2013)

Now Matthew Sweet is one of those authors that I have mixed feelings about because sometimes he can write really good stories which are easy to follow and then he can write stories that I struggle to follow from start to finish so I always approach Sweet stories knowing that the story could go anyway. The second story of the series sees a big historical name involved in the story. Here we get Sigmund Freud plays by Adrian Lukis who has appeared in several Big Finish stories. However in the first scene with Freud we realise that it’s a dream and that seems like the theme of this story. I think the idea of spending time about Jago’s dream of chasing a monkey in a dress is something that seems quite barmy but for some reason it fits this series well. Soon it becomes the life and times of Henry Gordon Jago and we get to see a bit of his early life. We also get to see a bit of Litefoot’s early life and also get to see Litefoot quite angry which in all the stories that we have had in these series isn’t something that I thought I would ever hear and it was a fun thing to witness. Both Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter put in good performances and just seem to embrace the madness that we hear in this story.

The story seems to be linked to the previous story and Litefoot is trying to help his friend. However as the story progresses I must admit that it seemed to take a bit of a leap and I think that this was going to be a Matthew Sweet story that I wasn’t going to get. It’s not a terrible story by any stretch of the imagination as Sweet is too good a writer to come up with terrible characters and a terrible story. It’s just that it didn’t grip me in the way that The Skeleton Quay did. The middle half of the story seems to go a bit barmy which whilst fun to listen to didn’t seem to be easy to follow in my opinion. The last quarter sees the explanation and I thought that it seemed to finish the story well. Lukis did a good job as Sigmund Freud and whilst I don’t really care for that sort of stuff I think that its always good to have a real name in a story. It lends it’s a bit of realism.

I recently listened to The Dark Planet story and felt that it was too long and didn’t maintain my interest whereas this lasted just long enough. I think that at just under an hour this story lasted just the right amount of time. Whilst it didn’t grab me like the previous story I can’t say that there weren’t things in this release that I didn’t enjoy. Compared to his previous Jago and Litefoot stories that he has done I think this is actually one of his best but I don’t think that it will be my favourite story of the series.