High-energy slapstick about state of the NHS
In The Sick Of It Assembly George Square Studios (Venue 17) until 26 August JJJJ
This show begins with a madcap attempt to revive a body on stage, which sets the tone for the rest: a frank look at the parlous state of the NHS through the lens of comedy. Theatre company Wake the Beast was invited in April 2020 to work alongside clinical psychologists in three London NHS Trusts and four care homes to help support staff wellbeing. Since then they have collected more than 500 interviews which writer and director Adam Mcguigan has drawn on for this show.
In a fast-paced hour, Mcguigan and fellow performer Kemi Coker tell us about dieticians redeployed to do 12-hour shifts in ICU, patients phoning 999 from their hospital beds because they felt unsafe and nurses wearing PPE improvised from plastic punch pockets. But, as one interviewee – a mental health nurse who had lost a patient – says, the problem is bigger than the pandemic, it is the consequence of years of cuts.
As well as covering all the things you might expect, the show encompasses the lesser known parts of the NHS, like the wheelchair service at one hospital – one of the few unprivatised – which keeps going through the pandemic despite being deemed “non-essential”, and helps free up badly needed beds, and the beleaguered but determined Sickle Cell team. It’s also helpful when the actors reflect on their own experience, how useless they feel asking harassed nurses what brings them joy.
Amid the high-energy slapstick, there is space for poignant moments. And if the larger-than-life delivery gets a bit relentless, it does manage to briskly communicate a lot of unpalatable truths – not least that by 2023, the staff wellbeing project in which the actors worked was itself subject to cuts.