Health & Safety, Theatre Review. Epstein Theatre, Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Robert Stuart-Hudson, Vikki Earle, Kathryn Chambers, Connor Simkins, Elliot Bailey, Tony O’ Keeffe, Mikyla Jane Durkan, Ted Wilkinson.

Government and constitutional farce are alive and well and thriving. It could be argued that it is down to the political landscape that never seems to want to give up its grip on absurdity and restriction that sees the genre constantly able to entertain and give people the chills in equal and demanding measure.

How often did programmes such as Yes Minister come close to the knuckle when it delivered its laughter, how often has the truth of a Minister’s opinion, that was shrouded in the ridiculous, been seen to become policy and all the while politics dominates, from the cradle to the grave and with ever increasing intrudes in the Health & Safety of public’s ability to rely on common sense.

Health and Safety is a concern, nobody wants to ever return to the days when certain individuals could play fast and loose with anyone’s life and yet we have gone down a route where nothing can be left to chance and the Government can even bring down rulings on what goes on in a world that is based on their own fantasy; a world observed with great effect by David Spicer in his wonderfully portrayed farce, Health & Safety.

Ministers come and Ministers go, their shelf life always determined by various factors, by the least amount of embarrassment they can cause; and yet we have arrived at a place where George Orwell would throw up his hands in despair and mutter “I told you so” as he walked off vowing to not bother being a constant source of prediction again. What is worse than the Government use of the absurd, surely the cover up and the denial that something happened, the public finding they cannot be bothered to see the truth for themselves.

As the beauty of David Spicer’s play shows how thought can manipulate others into behaving in a way that only serves the state, how the freedom of information can be used to navigate and pull the strings of all who find themselves in the given situation, so too does the beauty of farce as a concept give the more humerous side of life its balance. A politician caught in a compromising position at a Health and Safety seminar, the possibility of the practise being laughed at by the wider public, the demand of the well-meaning but ultimately draconian belief of the NICE commission; all brings to view that politics, at the best of times, is a game played where the rules are made up on the spot, everybody translates them differently and everybody keeps a separate score.

Health & Safety is a play that is enjoyable, absolutely funny but which, like all good farce, has the true meaning boiling underneath; the message that many miss but stares us in the face, the game forever changes and we don’t have the rule book to hand.

Ian D. Hall