The NHS takes care of us, but are we taking enough care of the NHS? It’s the question at the heart of Tangled Feet’s ambitious attempt to provide a theatrical metaphor for the health service and the pressures it faces by using a devised script and aerial performance. There is a terrific moment during an operation when the surgeon swings in to take over from his students during a life-threatening emergency, swooping to the rescue from on high, while the patient floats above the ground, as if having an out-of-body experience.
This is rich, textured stuff and the production needs more material like it, and fewer drab exchanges designed to impart information about the parlous state of the NHS and the battle between doctors and cost-cutting commercial outfits who care only for profits and nothing for departmental research. We need to know about privatisation by stealth, such issues should be attached more tightly to character and narrative if the show is not going to feel over-earnest.
Care is best when it deals in striking images, such as the sinister, bird-like monster lurking in hospital corridors that billow with smoke like a morphine haze. The show also plays rather neatly on the passivity of a theatre audience, casting us as patients endlessly sitting in waiting rooms for our appointment with a GP while a receptionist dangles above us, tying herself in knots as she tries to field calls from those wanting to see a doctor.
Care doesn’t turn a blind eye to the imperfections and failings of the NHS, but it reminds us of the need to cherish it, because we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
- At Watford Palace theatre until 28 June. Box office: 01923 225671.
