Writer: Harriet Madeley
Director: Madelaine Moore
Death is a topic that we don’t talk about all that much. As Harriet Madeley tells us in her self-penned Outpatient, the Victorians obsessed about death and never spoke of sex, and we’ve kind of flipped the switch on that.
In this solo show, Madeley plays Olive, a tabloid journalist who wants to break out of her rut of writing about Love Island contestants by writing a piece about our collective discomfort around mortality. As part of her research, she sneaks into a palliative care wing to leave her business cards on the bedside tables of the dying. Olive is not, we quickly realise, the most sensitive of people.
But Olive’s plans about writing about a fear of death come into sharp focus when, after a doctor’s appointment about her constipation, she is told matter-of-factly that she has primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic liver condition with no known cure. Olive starts to spiral when, despite her doctor’s advice, she Googles her diagnosis and discovers that she has already had the condition for longer than the average life expectancy.
Madeley’s hilarious script catalogues how Olive’s refusal to acknowledge her condition is a sharp contrast to her fiancée Tess (like all other characters, played in on recorded audio). A war correspondent, Tess’s no-nonsense attitude results in ring binders full of questions for doctors and a determination to get on with life as quickly as possible, planning for a future both women are afraid might not happen.
As Olive spirals, she meets up with Evelyn, an attractive woman from the palliative ward who similarly refuses to sit and wait for death. Their escapades, from drunken karaoke to dropping acid in a park, are recounted with biting wit that counteracts the potential darkness of the subject matter. With just two props, a treadmill and a yoga ball, Madeley deftly illustrates a character who doesn’t want her life-limiting condition to define her, because she has yet to define herself by other means.
The problem with having a character whose self-centred narcissism is the source of humour is finding the balance between redemption and retention of the traits that make her funny. That’s a blend that Madeley and her director, Madelaine Moore, successfully navigate. Olive’s self-revelation is pushed towards the final seconds of the piece as the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero (“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me”) hit home in a comically revelatory manner.
At one point in the show, it’s pointed out that the odds of dying are a dead cert – every single one of us will die. But “being alive is so stupendously unlikely, it’s almost impossible,” Madeley’s script reminds us. Maybe that’s why we don’t talk about death as much as we could, or should: we’re too busy marvelling that we beat the odds just by living.
Continues until 7 June 2025
