This Might Hurt, John Godber Company/Theatre Royal Wakefield, at York Theatre Royal today; Hull Truck Theatre, November 8 to 12; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, November 14 to 18.
AS doctor and nurse comedies go, this is more what a carry on than Carry On, as John Godber draws on personal and family experience for his diagnosis of the health of the NHS.
This Might Hurt began life two years ago as a University of Hull piece for an East Riding Council literature festival to attract people to libraries for reasons other than taking out a book.
Godber has retained original cast members Josie Morley and Rachael Abbey to play around 30 characters between them alongside Yorkshire stage stalwart Robert Angell in the expanded two-hour version.
The style echoes Godber’s greatest hit, Bouncers, both in its use of verse and economy of storytelling in a play of two halves.
Angell’s narrator character, actor Jack, is a former doctor in Casualty who now stars in German sausage adverts. He says This Might Hurt is a memory play ¬ - hence the grey set design by Foxton - where the two stories might make you laugh or angry, but not sad.
Well, there is some lugubrious humour in the first half, with bright lighting to match, as Jack recalls his own good experience of the NHS when he suffers a life-threatening pulmonary embolism.
The second story makes him angry, and will make you depressed, if not sad, as the comedy dissipates and Graham Kirk’s lighting around the NHS insignia darkens in the face of the rapid demise of Jack’s Aunt Bet.
Her care fails, in a no man’s land between doctors, consigning her to the out-tray, and carers caught up in rules and regulations that keep getting in the way of doing things that would help. Grimly truthful, This Might Hurt is no laughing matter.
This Might Hurt, John Godber Company/Theatre Royal Wakefield, at York Theatre Royal today at 2.30pm and 7.30pm; box office, 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. Also Hull Truck Theatre, November 8 to 12, 01482 323638 or hulltruck.co.uk; Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, November 14 to 18, 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com
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