After seven months away, the West End opened its doors again last night with a gala performance for NHS staff of Adam Kay’s inordinately popular doctoring diary, This Is Going to Hurt. The audience was socially distanced, everyone was masked – and on stage, even the medic-turned-comic Kay wore PPE. If pubs are safe, this was safe. Which is just as well: contracting a fatal virus at a show about the NHS would be too ironic even for standup comedy.
When I first saw the show, nigh on four years ago, it sought – alongside the laughs – to offer support to striking junior doctors. Time has not dated Kay’s hour, nor rendered its very affecting cri de coeur, about the disgraceful treatment of the NHS and its staff by politicians, any less necessary. That’s not the only moment at which our host gets emotional this evening: an earlier section on the incident that ended his medical career brings tears – unexpectedly, he says – to his eyes.
I’m not surprised. Both show and book are blissfully funny in places. There’s the body-comedy of Kay’s daily experiences on the medical frontline, our blushes at which he does not spare: all those “de-gloved” penises and Kinder Eggs secreted in vaginas. There’s the bathos of his attempts to maintain a normal life – have relationships, sleep in his own bed – as an overworked doctor. And there are the snatches of punning song, as Kay gives pop hits a medical makeover. Take a Look at Me Nan; Ob-La-Di / oh bloody bladder – the pleasure is intense as we wait for the chorus and the corny punchline to land.
But the laughs aren’t always uncomplicated. You have to work, for instance, to focus on the funny side of the patient who had the wrong kidney excised. By the end, it’s impossible to resist Kay’s argument that his former colleagues need more substantial support than political lip service and a Thursday-evening clap. The West End just couldn’t have reopened with a timelier show.
This Is Going to Hurt runs at the Apollo theatre until 8 November.
