Writer: George Almond
Director: Tobias Deacon
Should a doctor ever do the wrong thing for the right reasons? Neuro specialist Frances certainly thinks so in George Almond’s compelling medical ethics drama Impulse, performed at the Cockpit Theatre as part of the 2025 Camden Fringe. Exploring professional arrogance, the blurry line between public good and personal judgement, Almond’s play lays out the scientific and moral arguments on both sides as the central character tries to take a shortcut to medical glory instead of the longer and perhaps far safer traditional methodology.
Learning they have been shortlisted for a prestigious £10 million grant, scientists Frances and Grace are pre-emptively celebrating when Frances’ old friend Harry arrives to privately ask her to breach her clinical trial boundaries and treat him for a brain injury caused by repeated concussions when playing rugby. Throwing caution to the wind, Frances agrees, but it might cost her everything she has worked for.
Almond’s drama has a Tom Stoppard quality, merging acted scenes with detailed scientific explanations about how the brain works and what happens when it fails, all narrated by Frances as she explains the value of her research and the extent of her expertise to the audience. But it is important context for the compromising decisions she impulsively makes, and in staging these scenes the show has been highly imaginative, using connecting streamers given to the audience to explain how broken neural pathways can be reformed in different ways through treatment and likening infant learning to a messy orchestration that eventually finds harmony.
The story itself begins with an unlikely premise – Almond never explains why Frances agrees to help someone she hasn’t seen for a decade with so little questioning – but evolves into an interesting study of scientific ambition driven by a God complex-like belief that she is making a difference. Almond offsets this with collaborator Grace, little more than the voice of reason, explaining why helping Harry off the record is a bad idea, the bigger risks to their project that may result and, importantly, the tug of war between one good result and sound evidence. And although that sounds heavily expositional, the debates are largely translated into lively and engaging dialogue.
Here and there, Impulse is overly repetitive, Grace and Frances essentially have the same argument three times while later Frances asks Grace what she will do with the grant as though they wouldn’t have had to write an extensively detailed application for a sum of that scale. The personal involvement between Frances and Harry feels excessive, her exploitation of professional ethics is already enough without a poorly sketched attraction getting in the way. It means the show could lose 10 minutes, cutting it from 75-minutes, without undermining its substance or taking away from the performances – Annabelle Brown (Frances), Charlie Cameron (Grace) and Laurence Ubong Williams (Harry).
Impulse leaves the Camden Fringe with a positive diagnosis for its future, a serious drama unafraid to lean into its intellectualism but finding accessible ways in for the audience and fallible characters who shun the logic of their brains and let their emotional impulses run riot.
Runs until 6 August
Camden Fringe runs until 24 August 2025
