A musical about cancer? I see no reason why not. For much of its length this show, co-presented with Complicite Associates and written by Bryony Kimmings and Brian Lobel with a score by Tom Parkinson, offers a robust demystification of it subject. Only in its later stages does it turn from a piece of theatre into a dubious form of group therapy.
The premise is simple. Emily, a single mum, takes baby Owen into hospital for a series of scans. We share her helpless anxiety as her son is taken from her and she follows the stories of a group of cancer patients. They include a radical feminist, a pregnant 18-year-old, a woman seeking a miracle cure for a terminal condition, a defiant working-class smoker and a young man with a testicular problem who is accompanied everywhere by his mother. They are a representative bunch, all, we later discover, based on real-life cases.
Clearly the point of the show is to sabotage cliche responses to cancer: not just the vocabulary of “struggle” that surrounds it but also, as one character says, the “aggressive sorrow” and special “cancer face”, assumed by friends. The advantage of the music is that it gives each patient his or her moment in the spotlight while showing collective attitudes. Purloining a phrase from Susan Sontag, Kingdom of the Sick is a jaunty choral number capturing the sense that cancer patients are part of a large, ever-growing club. But we are also reminded that each case is different: Mark, the heavy smoker pining for his estranged daughter, sings a Willie Nelson-type cowboy song while Laura, destined for a hospice because of ovarian cancer, rips off her clothes to launch into a shake-it-all-about 70s rock routine.
But, as the show proceeded, my reservations started to mount. It increasingly seems to be battering at an open door. Far from being reticent in speaking about illness or death, I would say we have never been more open about it: I am at an age when any social occasion is prefaced by what a friend calls “the organ recital” and, when I was diagnosed with a kidney tumour three years ago, I saw no need to hide the fact. Although I welcome the show’s candour about cancer, it also lapses at the end into an extraordinary form of self-display: as cast and audience are invited to shout aloud the names of patients they know, I felt I was attending a secular revivalist meeting.
Kimmings herself directs with great verve and there are good performances from Amanda Hadingue as the distressed single mum, Golda Rosheuvel as the miracle-seeking Laura, Rose Shalloo as the teenager facing genetic issues and Naana Agyei-Ampadu as a tough American who wisecracks her way through trouble. The show is bold in confronting cancer with ebullient music rather than hushed reverence but when Kimmings, in a climactic voiceover, endorses the point, it comes dangerously close to self-congratulation.
• At the Dorfman theatre, London, until 29 November. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
A Pacifist"s Guide to the War on Cancer review – bold musical demystifies the disease
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder