wed 06/11/2024

medical

Next to Normal, Wyndham's Theatre review - rock musical on the trauma of mental illness

We open on one of those suburban American families we know so well from Eighties and Nineties sitcoms - they’re not quite Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, but they’re not far off. As usual, we wonder how Americans have so much space, such big...

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Marie Curie, Charing Cross Theatre review - like polonium, best left undiscovered

There are many women whose outstanding science was attributed to men or simply devalued to the point of obscurity, but recent interest in the likes of DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin and NASA’s Katherine Johnson has given credit where credit is due....

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Multiple Casualty Incident, The Yard Theatre review - NGO medics in training have problems of their own

We open on one of those grim, grim training rooms that all offices have – the apologetic sofa, the single electric kettle, the instant coffee. The lighting is too harsh, the chairs too hard, the atmosphere already post-lunch on Wednesday and it...

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First Person: actor Paul Jesson on survival, strength, and the healing potential of art

In September 2022 I had an email from my American friend Richard Nelson: "Would you like me to write you a play?" Such an offer probably comes the way of very few actors and I was bowled over by it. My astonished and grateful response was tempered...

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Miles Jupp, Cambridge Arts Theatre review - life's vicissitudes turned into laughs

It takes a talented comic to turn a horrible life experience into comedy, but Miles Jupp is nothing if not talented. Add in a bit of self-depreciation, a smidgen of philosophical musing and a dollop of ruderies about bodily functions and you have On...

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An Enemy of the People, Duke of York's Theatre - performative and predictable

Real life is a helluva lot scarier right now than you might guess from the performative theatrics on display in the new West End version of An Enemy of the People, which updates Ibsen's 1882 play to our vexatious modern day.Matt Smith is in...

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Pandemonium, Soho Theatre review - satire needs a shot of Pfizer's finest to revive tired storylines

In 2020, throughout the country, many people’s lives were affected adversely by an ever-present threat to our already fragile society. Though most got over it, many people still bear the cost every day, sapping them of energy, making them cough and...

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Manic Street Creature, Southwark Playhouse review - songs in the key of a traumatised life

There’s an old-fashioned feel to the story at its outset: Young woman, guitar in hand, Northern accent announcing as much as it always did, who makes a new life in London, all the money going on a room in Camden. One recalls Georgy Girl or Darling,...

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Imposter 22, Royal Court Theatre review - ace on representation, less so on structure

The Royal Court’s collaboration with Access All Areas (AAA) may not be theatre’s first explicit embrace of the neurodiverse community on stage: Chickenshed has five decades of extraordinary inclusive work behind them and Jellyfish, starring Sarah...

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Best Interests, BBC One review - a family feels the unbearable strain of terminal illness

This is possibly not ideal viewing for a spell of sunny weather in June, but Jack Thorne’s drama about a family trying to cope with a terminally ill child is as compelling as it’s painful. Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen star as parents Andrew and...

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A Brief List of Everyone Who Died, Finborough Theatre review - 86 years, punctuated by fun and funerals

The family pet dies. It’s a problem many parents face, and when Gracie learns from her evasive father that her dog isn’t just gone, but gone forever, her five-year-old brain cannot process it and so begins a lifelong relationship with deaths,...

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Malpractice, ITV1 review - she got into a mess on the NHS

This skilfully-woven drama about an NHS doctor being battered by professional and personal pressures is undoubtedly timely, and benefits greatly from being written by Grace Ofori-Attah, a former NHS doctor herself. Her inside knowledge lends weight...

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