DO YOU have to be a little mad to be a politician? And, beneath the flippancy of that opening gambit, have some politicians actually been, well, a touch insane while in office?
If a politician can be mad after the democratic event, what does that say about the country they ran, or the voters who backed them, or those who didn't but chose instead to make easy mockery?
American playwright Donald Freed wraps many questions inside his play, and his main thesis is that nations can go mad too, in a self-deceiving willingness to do bad things in the name of a greater good, that isn't good or great at all.
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At a remote psychiatric hospital in Florida Keys, an eminent doctor is dragged back from his travels to attend to Patient No 1 - the name given to ex-president Bush, two years hence.
At first, the patient, who is accompanied at all times by his security guard, is a distanced ghost, stiff-legged and babbling, caught in chemical-induced agitation.
Gradually, the doctor tries to unlock the drug-addled ex-president, while extending a wary hand to the spook. A slow swell of anger and frustration builds to a moment of near violence, in which the doctor more or less attacks the ex-president.
A gathering storm follows, lightning and all, as the former president is taken off the drugs, and forced, in scenes of guttural discomfort, to confront himself, to climb out from the disguises put out for him by others. Or something like that: there are surprises inside surprises here.
Freed, a clever, intense and bold writer, avoids the clear-cut or the neatly wrapped. For a play about ideas, politics and morality, this is also an edgily atmospheric piece, with at times the pace of a filmic thriller, and sudden laughter too.
Jon Farris is commanding and fearful as the liberal-minded doctor literally attending his own demon, while Robert Pickavance moves from dead-eyed twitching to cowboy delusions, and emotional meltdown as the prominent patient. Jonathan Race has less to do as the mechanical server - "affirmative!" - yet his lesser role forms the third piece of the dramatic triangle.
Excitingly staged by Jo Scotcher, and directed with verve by Damian Cruden, this is not an easy or expected play. But it does ask big questions while still entertaining, and that can't be bad.
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