Remember when theater used to be of the moment and reflect what was going on outside the auditorium politically and socially? How playwrights were like doctors forcing us to gaze upon an X-ray of our societal ailments? Such intense examination in our otherwise escapist entertainment fare does occur upon occasion and should be celebrated. Two current Off-Broadway productions, The Doctor and The Comeuppance, offer an unblinkered diagnosis of the current divided state, and while it may not provide a pretty picture, these X-rays are illuminating and gripping.
To extend the medical metaphor, the first report on the faltering state of our psychological health is dire but makes for necessary and absorbing viewing. It’s an import from Great Britain and an adaptation of an obscure, century-old melodrama, but the The Doctor is a vital, unflinching report on what’s happening in our country as well as in England.
Director-adaptor Robert Icke, who dazzled New York audiences last summer with a modern repertory staging of Hamlet and Oresteia, returns to the Park Avenue Armory with his “very” free, powerful adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s obscure 1912 drama, Professor Bernhardi. That seldom-produced work pits the titular Jewish physician against the anti-Semitic medical establishment when he refuses to allow a Catholic priest admission to a dying young woman who has not explicitly requested religious counsel.
In Icke’s skillful updating, the central conflict is repeated, but the aftermath takes on multiple modern issues including identity politics, racism, sexism, religion versus science, and the “woke” phenomenon. The new protagonist is the strident, uncompromising Dr. Ruth Wolff (a brilliantly bombastic Juliet Stevenson) who abhors labels for individuals, has Jewish roots, eschews religion, and is a closet lesbian. The initial confrontation with the priest is complicated by his being black and by the 14-year-old patient perishing of sepsis after a botched, self-inflicted abortion.
The incident becomes a public-relations nightmare as the institute Ruth founded and runs is desperate for funding to open a new building and fund research for an Alzheimer’s cure. As the ramifications of Ruth’s actions explode, she becomes a victim of media hysteria and finally must reevaluate her most basic assumptions about her profession and herself.
Icke’s script deftly and deeply explores the complex dimensions of the issues raised. His direction moves the play along like a locomotive yet still allows contradictory ideas and viewpoints to be fully expressed. You’ll be thinking and debating about this play long after the final lights dim.
Tom Gibbons’s propulsive percussion score, played by Hannah Ledwidge at the performance attended, further drives the action. Natasha Chivers’s lighting also adds to tense atmosphere, and in a stroke of daring casting and to force us to reconsider our own biases, several of the male roles are played by women, blacks are played by whites, and vice versa.
Another layer of conflict is added with depictions of Ruth’s homelife which includes her partner’s illness and chafing at being kept hidden, as well as the visits of a transgender teen whom Ruth mentors.
Stevenson’s powerhouse performance dominates the proceedings. From her first explosive entrance when she bursts into a meeting correcting the grammar of an intern to her painful unravelling under intense public pressure to a final calm but devastated contemplation of her horrific ordeal, Stevenson charts Ruth’s painful journey with compassion and complexity.
Valuable contributions also come from Juliet Garricks as Ruth’s long-suffering partner, Matilda Tucker as her troubled teen friend, John Mackay in the dual role of the priest and the patient’s outraged father, and Naomi Wirthner and Dona Croll switching genders as male authority figures.
The prescription for the conflict is inconclusive here. Icke offers no easy answers, but The Doctor raises many worthy and perplexing questions.
