Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Frances Ashman, Stephanie Cole, William Hope, Natalie Klamar, Hywel Morgan, Brian Protheroe, Jane Wymark, Tristram Wymark.
The patient has been seen by many consultants over the years, some with the very best of intentions, some whose intentions are perhaps dubious at best and down- right scandalous at worst and yet somehow the patient is still here and still keeping society going. The N.H.S. still carries on delivering from cradle to the grave.
Renowned theatre company Out of Joint puts the N.H.S. front and centre in their latest play as they bring Stella Feehily’s This May Hurt a Bit to Liverpool. Featuring national treasure Stephanie Cole, the critically acclaimed hit will be putting the patient and the institution under the microscope from Wednesday 7th to Saturday 10th May.
A month after stating, “We will stop the top-down reorganisation of the N.H.S. that has got in the way of patient care”, the government launched the biggest top-down reorganisation the service had seen in its 65-year history. With wit, tenderness, and splashes of the surreal, Stella Feehily’s new play follows one family’s journey through the digestive system of the NHS, and asks: what’s the prognosis?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Neil Dudgeon, Fiona Dolman, Gwilym Lee, Tazmin Malleson, Les Dennis, Emily Joyce, Perdita Avery, Elizabeth Berrington, Nadia Cameron-Blakey, Pamela Betsy Cooper, Paul Blair, Anthony Farrelly, Mark Heap, James Murray, Nikesh Patel, Jonah Russell, Hannah Tointon, Susie Trayling.
It is a good job that the county of Midsomer is a fictional region. Not because of the many murders, ever intriguing, ever inventive. It is the abundance of the Detective Sergeants that pass through the doors of the Police Station in Causton that make the programme, though entertaining and almost compulsive viewing, a baffling place in which regular continuality strikes real terror in the community.