Adrian Lovett is a tiresome, druggy, minor reality celeb, apparently once dubbed “the most hated man in Britain”, whose career and heart are both giving out. He comes up with a wheeze to revive his TV career and get a new ticker: he’ll have a synthetic heart transplant at St Judith’s, one of the last remaining British hospitals where you can get some free care, although even there the financial situation is so dire that patients can purchase upgrades on their treatment.
Lovett’s transplant will be shown on live TV, thereby saving St Judith’s from monetary meltdown, and getting him back on primetime TV. What could possibly go wrong?
Sadly, passion for an issue and good intentions do not always make great theatre, and that’s the case with this show – which is billed as surreal, and is, but never in a good way. Misleadingly termed immersive theatre, it is actually a traditional production that breaks the fourth wall halfway through to allow the audience to participate in a debate about whether the NHS should be free at the point of delivery or not.
The debate is not properly set up forum-theatre-style, but nonetheless on the night I was there, it proved the most engaging 15 minutes in a production that never picks the best tools to remind us of the stealthy privatisation of the NHS.
The scenario is muddy, the writing under-powered, and it’s not only heart transplants going on here: halfway through, one of the characters has a complete motivational transplant. It’s heartfelt, but there is only one survivor: Harriet Madeley, who rises well above the material as the consultant struggling to save what’s left of the NHS.
• At Theatre Delicatessen, London, until 9 May.
