BREATHE deep, John Godber's new NHS comedy is no laughing matter, but then again it is, as this week's run at York Theatre Royal will reveal.

Produced by the John Godber Company and Theatre Royal Wakefield, and directed by Godber, This Might Hurt offers a humorous but heart-breaking look at the NHS, investigating what we deserve and what we actually receive.

When tough actor Jack Skipton, played by Robert Angell, returns from filming to care for his ageing aunt, he has no idea what awaits him. So begins an odyssey through the NHS, from cancelled GP appointments to wrongly booked scans, frustrated consultants to abusive home carers who smoke on the doorstep.

Joining Angell will be Rachael Abbey and Josie Morley, both from the Hull Truck Theatre supported artists The Roaring Girls, who play 30 different characters between them, including doctors, nurses, carers, radiologists and consultants.

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Josie Morley and Rob Angell in John Godber's This Might Hurt. Picture: Amy Charles Media

Not for the time in his long career as a writer-director, Yorkshireman John Godber is drawing on personal experience for a play that first emerged as a 50-minute piece trialled at the University of Hull almost two years ago and now expanded for its re-launch.

"It was commissioned by the East Riding Council for a literature festival and the idea was to see if they could get people to think about going to a library for another reason other than getting books out," says John.

"I was given carte blanche to write whatever I wanted, and so I wrote about what happened to my aunt, who had an illness that went undiagnosed for a long time. There was a discourse that it was 'unsolvable' and she rapidly deteriorated. It felt like the consultant had consigned her to the out-tray.

"We decided we would look after her at home and the NHS and social services, despite their best attempts, just couldn't join up the dots. It was a catalogue of disasters, and I'd already gone through a similar experience with my mother."

John concluded that "at the edge of the NHS there seems to be chaos and confusion at the time when we most needed them to serve us". "It's not a criticism, but an observation of how this huge organisation failed us at the edges," he says.

"In the new play, I would say there's a balance, because I'd had a very good experience with the NHS when I suffered a pulmonary embolism 23 years ago and reflect that, but the play seems to get up the noses of the NHS, though many of the doctors and health workers I've spoken to have said it's absolutely true."

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Josie Morley and Rob Angell in John Godber's This Might Hurt. Picture: Amy Charles Media

How could the NHS be improved, John? "If I could do that, I wouldn't be writing plays, I'd be working in the NHS, but there is something in the contrast between the high salaries for doctors and the low pay of the carers, whose level of training is significantly quite poor," he says.

"I wish I didn't have to write this play, but I could either write a letter of complaint or, as a playwright, write a play, which has to be the better action. The point is: if the system fails us once, it is failing us once too often."

Summing up This Might Hurt, John says: "The section of the play that deals with my aunt's demise is pretty thin on comedy, but the NHS that I experienced quite frankly saved my life, so the play is a game of two halves.

"This is a play about the National Health Service told in the same style as Bouncers, told in the second half in verse, which gives it a distancing feel but also elevates it. I think it must have been dealing with all that anxiety and anguish, where the only way I could do that was in verse."

John Godber's This Might Hurt tours York Theatre Royal, tonight until Saturday; Hull Truck Theatre, November 8 to 12; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, November 14 to 19. Box office: York, 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk; Hull, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Scarborough, 01723 370541 or sjt.uk.comRecommended age: 16 plus.