![]() ![]() But then Icke starts pulling the rug from under us as it’s revealed that the other actors – Stevenson excepted – have been cast against the gender and/or race of the character they’re playing. ![]() It looks like we’re being set up for a spicy medical ethics drama. The priest gets angry Wolff gets angry the girl dies. Despite her acerbic humour, she views the world purely through the prism of her profession she sincerely aspires to have no identity beyond being a doctor, almost regarding herself as an instrument rather than a person.īut after she impulsively brings a 14-year-old girl dying of a botched abortion into the institute, she bars a Catholic priest sent to administer last rites - nominally because the patient doesn’t know she’s dying. As the play begins, it’s clear from the chatter of Wolff’s colleagues that she is not entirely beloved, and no wonder – she is almost monstrously dedicated to her job. Juliet Stevenson stars as the imperious Professor Ruth Wolff, an eminent secular Jewish doctor and founder of a pioneering dementia research institute. ‘The Doctor’ is an extremely full-on rewrite of Austrian dramatist Arthur Schnitzel’s 1912 drama ‘Professor Bernhardi’, which you’d be forgiven for not being familiar with because it hasn’t had a proper UK production in decades. But also it’s a simple case of not appreciating what you’ve got until it’s gone. In this context, it’s bloody good to have ‘The Doctor’ back. He’s also seemingly stopped doing interviews, and national press weren’t allowed to see his recent regional touring production of ‘Animal Farm’ (brilliant, according to my mum). Three years on, and the West End transfer of ‘The Doctor’ is the first London has heard from him since the last time it was on stage – partly the pandemic, but largely because he’s been working elsewhere. Although I’m a fully paid member of the Robert Icke fan club, I didn’t love the wunderkind writer-director’s last UK play when I saw it in 2019. ‘The Doctor’ got rapturous reviews, but coming at the end of the extraordinary run of plays that he made while working for the Almeida Theatre, I thought it lacked the gut-punch emotional wallop of his best work, a bit more head than heart.īut in the ‘10s we were spoiled by a constant stream of Icke’s work.
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