It was Mark Rylance who elected to bring Dr Semmelweis on to the stage with the help of writer Stephen Brown and director Tom Morris. The collaboration began during the pandemic when handwashing was in the headlines – appropriately, in that Semmelweis’s discovery, in 1847, was that he could save women dying of puerperal fever in childbirth, on the wards of Vienna’s general hospital, by getting doctors to wash their hands in chlorinated lime solution. More challenging was persuading a conservative, high-handed Viennese medical profession to listen to the findings of a loose cannon of a Hungarian doctor with poor communication skills. This show had a sellout run in Bristol last year and has now been repurposed in a magnificently polished new draft for the West End.
Designer Ti Green’s hospital is a gilded period piece – as poised as the medical knowledge of the period was unsteady, with not an antiseptic surface in sight. But it is for Rylance’s character study of the doctor that this show is a must-see (the medical history is of interest too). Rylance’s Semmelweis is a stiff, formally tormented soul with a little black moustache. In his quieter moments, he looks like one of those 19th-century photographs in which sitters are obliged to keep their faces still lest movement wreck everything. He has an uncanny ability to convey distress through his body, almost without moving: the inward becoming outward.
He begins with a haunted harangue about hospital linen but, whatever he is saying, his delivery keeps you rapt, especially when he seems almost not to breathe, words unspooling at speed towards their close. Semmelweis aims to overtake an occasional stutter that is at odds with his headlong purpose, and Rylance shows us, at every turn, that the doctor’s inability to empathise conventionally is tragically at odds with his determination to save mothers’ lives.
The supporting cast is splendid. Amanda Wilkin is affecting as Semmelweis’s baffled wife, and Daniel York Loh terrific as a jaunty ringmaster of autopsies, doffing his top hat to the corpse on the table. Pauline McLynn is involving as the midwife who makes a fatal mistake. Morris’s production is theatrically unerring, the ensemble work outstanding. The inclusion of violinists is a masterstroke, a commentary that harmoniously amplifies our misgivings. The use of ballet dancers is equally moving: they dance as a young woman dies in childbirth – and this is not sentimental, it ambushes you (the fabulous choreography is by Antonia Francheschi). By the end, the medical profession is revealed to be a crushing hierarchy. And when Dr Semmelweis loses control, in this unforgettable play, he loses it entirely.
Kwame Kwei-Armah’s new play Beneatha’s Place, which he directs with panache, is inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 classic, A Raisin in the Sun. Kwei-Armah adopts the couple who, at the end of her play, dream of going to Africa and takes them there. Beneatha’s Place opens as the Nigerian academic and his black American wife, a medical student, move into a wealthy Lagos suburb and are “welcomed” by the house’s departing white American owners. They are shown how to turn on the lights.
You hope this is an insult too far. But if you are white, prepare to turn red at the more subtly insidious, up-to-date grotesqueries. The white characters become more covertly racist when, in the second half, the play shifts to the US. Beneatha is now dean of an Ivy League university where African studies are endangered. Prof Mark Bond (the excellently squirm-inducing Sebastian Armesto) is the worst of them: a right-on white academic who fails to see that he is right off, looting black consciousness.
Zackary Momoh is hugely sympathetic as the Nigerian academic, Joseph Asagai, in the first half and as the American academic Wale Oguns in the second, but it is Cherrelle Skeete’s Beneatha who steals – and seals – the show with her head held high, her heart full and a tussle between powerlessness and power ongoing. After the US supreme court’s recent ruling on affirmative action, it is the perfect moment for this exploration of how racism continues to distort education.
A Strange Loop is a Broadway musical that comes to London with a Pulitzer, a Tony and plaudits galore. This is a semi-autobiographical piece by Michael R Jackson, who worked as an usher on Broadway before becoming a star writer (a Cinderella story of sorts). But the production’s greatest strength is in its lead actor: Kyle Ramar Freeman. He is irresistible as “Usher” in scarlet velvet uniform and wobbly fez. He has a capaciously secure voice, especially melodious in its higher reaches. “Fat, black, queer” is how he describes himself. He has the sweetest smile, and when feeling upbeat (he can also be dejected and vulnerable), he sometimes skips on stage.
This is the story of an usher writing a musical about an usher writing a musical and so on – and this is neither a strange nor a new narrative loop, although delivered with pizazz. The production is stylishly directed by Stephen Brackett, with a svelte set, framed in neon, designed by Arnulfo Maldonado. The music is pop and R&B and unexceptional, although with smart lyrics – especially Inner White Girl (the Barbican warns of obscene language throughout). Many of the black American cultural references are likely to be lost on a British audience but that is no big deal. Coming out as an artist is shown to be as hard as coming out as queer and Jackson shrewdly explores the way black narratives are overseen by literary police – one agent urges him to write about “slavery or police violence”. Usher’s “thoughts” are turned into characters who persecutingly prance around on stage in risqué vests, hoodies and tracksuit bottoms. This is a nice idea but the constantly interrupted action brings diminishing returns. The biggest relief comes when the space is cleared for Freeman to sing the beautiful Memory Song on his own – an unimpeded ending.
Simon Stephens and Mark Eitzel’s Song from Far Away was first produced in 2015, in a sensational Ivo von Hove production in which the lead, Eelco Smits, performed much of his monologue naked. Its new incarnation with Will Young (of Pop Idol fame) is a more staid, middle-aged and clothed affair, set in a hotel room sleekly designed by Ingrid Hu. But staidness is only skin deep.
Young is outstanding as Willem, who has flown from New York to Amsterdam to attend his brother’s funeral. His face changes constantly: grief occasionally giving way to a twinkle in the eyes or a big, liberating laugh. Willem explores tensions within his family who, it is implied, disapprove of his homosexuality and he experiences loss of another kind as he attempts to hook up with an ex-lover – a humiliating miscalculation. Deftly directed by Kirk Jameson, there is some fine singing here (it would be missing a trick, with Young, if there were not), and Stephens’s writing is a treat.
Star ratings (out of five)
Dr Semmelweis ★★★★★
Beneatha’s Place ★★★★
A Strange Loop ★★★
Song from Far Away ★★★★
