Joe Penhall's exuberant new play lifts the curse that has afflicted the National's new-writing policy for the past three years. Very much in the manner of Shaw in The Doctor's Dilemma, Penhall uses the medical trade as a metaphor for the vanity, self-deception and ostentatious certainty of all professions that work against the common interest.
Penhall's setting is a psychiatric hospital where two doctors engage in a Darwinian battle for survival. The catalyst for their conflict is Christopher, a young black patient who believes that oranges are blue and that Idi Amin is his father. The senior consultant, Robert, wants him thrust back into the community; Bruce, a first-year junior doctor, argues with equal vehemence that Christopher needs further treatment. What follows is a ferocious contest of wills.
Part of Penhall's success lies in keeping one's sympathies shifting. One moment you think Bruce has a protective idealism; the next that Robert has a paternalistic common sense. Gradually it dawns on one that they are both more concerned with confirming their pet theories than with responding to the patient. Penhall makes the Shavian point that all professions are a conspiracy against the laity and eventually become wrapped in hermetic self-regard.
Credibility is sometimes stretched, as when Robert naively swallows the idea that his junior rival is on drugs. But Penhall has the gift of making serious points in a comic manner and of conveying moral indignation without preaching. He also gets the benefit of a finely tuned production by Roger Michell played on a slightly skewed, in-the-round stage in which William Dudley's clinical conference room is gradually reduced to chaos.
Bill Nighy is excellent as the senior consultant whose willowy assurance gives way to bursts of rage. There is equally good work from Andrew Lincoln as his junior and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the schizophrenic patient. Sympathy for the victim is matched by Penhall's stinging satire on the arrogant assurance of professionalism.
Box office: 0171-452 3000.
