There are occasions when only naturalism and documentary detail will do. Michael Wynne’s new play Who Cares is important because it’s verbatim. It provides a portfolio of facts about the NHS, embodied in encounters with practitioners and patients. Thirty per cent of prescribed medicines are not taken at all. Poor diet is responsible for “more disease than physical inactivity, smoking and alcohol combined”. A circumcision costs £931.50.
The nuggets of information are dispensed in different spots of the Royal Court, visited by a promenading audience. Perhaps because there are three directors – Debbie Hannan, Lucy Morrison and Hamish Pirie – this is not perfectly achieved. The division of the audience into groups carries no value. The Court has not been totally transformed. Some corridors have pictures of medical staff; others have information about The Twits. Yet the primary purpose sings through. It provides facts as experiences. It does so with candour, verve and humour. An end-of-her-tether medic breaks off from a patient in A&E: “I want to offer her to Dr Shipman.”
In a nifty reconstruction of a GP’s cubicle, wry and versatile Elizabeth Berrington looks up from her data-laden screen and says she’s glad the audience didn’t arrive when she “had been watching a baby alligator hatch in a teacup”.
Oliver Letwin and John Redwood’s 1988 five-step proposal for privatisation, now pretty much achieved, is given a good kicking. Yet the core of the play is not ideological, but practical, clear-sighted appraisal. “Usually you die for a good reason,” says a cardiologist. The GP calls for more common sense at home (and less internet checking of symptoms). The wonderful Eileen O’Brien, playing a nurse with scalpel wit and bandage warmth, asks for the return of the district nurse. More care and fewer extravagant hopes of cure is the plea. But cures can be counted: care can’t. Which politicians will be going to see Who Cares? They all should.
