Tending, Brixton House Review
Reviewed by Charlotte for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
Verbatim theatre is an intensely tricky medium, treading the line between documentary and drama, testimonial and performance. It is not easy to achieve word-for-word authenticity and theatricality in the same breath, and many attempts have tried and failed. When it works, however, verbatim theatre produces definingly landmark theatre capable of cracking open the stories that live around us – think Anna Deveare Smith’s Fires in the Mirror or Moises Kaufman’s The Laramie Project. All of that to say, setting out to write a verbatim piece on the experience of nurses in the NHS was a brave mission for playwright El Blackwood to embark on.
Tending is an unflinching dip into the world of nursing, through the eyes, and more importantly the words, of over fifty real nurses interviewed by Blackwood for the project. From the expected and occasionally stale jokes about cleaning poo and napping in cupboards to the cases that still haunt them, the three ‘avatars’ (so to speak) of these nurses approach the unifying story of nursing from a place of care. Nursing, they say, is caring. It is having love and compassion for people at their most vulnerable, whether they are drunk on a Saturday night or dying of dementia. In a sea of dialogue filled with pediatric wards and ICUs, antibiotics and medication schedules, each and every bit of technical jargon and departmental protocol is unified by the underlying theme of care. That anchor proves vital to holding together the woven fabric of voices that make up the play.
Undoubtedly, the most affective section of Tending is its exploration of Covid-19 through the eyes of frontline healthcare workers. When Covid creeps into the narrative, you can practically feel it slither its way from the stage into the audience. Even though London today looks much like it did before the pandemic, its shadow lingers for so many, and Blackwood’s careful wielding of the first-hand accounts of those who faced it most intimately is both harrowing and comforting. It is a deeply cathartic reminder of the trauma we have all shared and the marks that endure on our healthcare system and the lives of those within it.
John Livesey’s direction is likewise effective in its simplicity. Though crafted from interviews, the piece hardly feels static. Livesey skillfully works with the triad of actors to build strong shapes in the limited stage space and pull defined characters out of disembodied sound-bytes. Each of the three feels distinct and real even as their words are taken from dozens of individuals. Even the environment, outfitted with three chairs and a bare fluorescent tube, is meticulously crafted. It’s sterile, medical, but it’s anything but cold. Much like the nurses whose stories are on-stage, the audience too feels they part of something, part of the care and part of the caring.
So, was Tending a daring undertaking in the shaky ‘post’ pandemic landscape of theatre? Absolutely. Did Blackwood and her collaborators succeed in bringing the stories of those who care for a country to the stage? Undoubtedly. A love letter of care to those who do the most caring, Tending is a project that applies theatre to our modern social consciousness in an accessible and deeply moving way.
At Brixton House until 12 October 2024.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
