Writer: Nathan Ellis
Director: Blanche McIntyre
Barely a day passes where the press does not confront its readers with the impact of budgetary limitations on the NHS or even forecasts of its demise. As such, the NHS makes an obvious choice of subject for a new play, and Super High Resolution appears to have everything else going for it, too, with a script by up-and-coming writer Nathan Ellis and the endorsement of as celebrated a director as Blanche McIntyre.
As such, it is a little disappointing that the production could have been set anywhere during the past thirty years of the NHS; older audience members may recall how nineties documentary Doctors to Be presented exactly the sort of pressures protagonist Anna finds herself under as a junior doctor in Ellis’ play. In the interim Jed Mercurio wrote Bodies, which offered a coruscating insight into the systemic failures of the NHS. If viewers approach Super High Resolution hoping for a similar but updated exposé of the failings of NHS, they will come out disappointed. Instead, the production offers a drama focused on the emotional complexities of the public and private life of Anna, a fictional character inspired by the desire of Ellis’ own sister to quit the profession.
While undoubtedly powerful, this script proves somewhat predictable in its plot with its combination of elements from both those public and private lives drawing Anna towards a suicide attempt. It is questionable whether so much needed to be piled on in the private life such as the death of Anna’s father (isn’t her long-term grief at her mother’s death powerful enough in itself?) and the plot twist in her relationship with boyfriend, David. All this rather dilutes the theme about the impact the career can have on the individual.
However, the script is redeemed by a deft combination of naturalism and humour, the former particularly notable in the two scenes where Anna deals with patient Janet, performed by the superb Hayley Carmichael, who provides an astonishingly complex, moving and believable performance, and so wins over the audience that gasps are audible when her fate is revealed. Perhaps the story of a suicidal ageing housewife is in more needing of telling than that of a junior doctor.
Meanwhile, the humour is carefully established in the opening scene where the audience encounters Lewis Shepherd as David, ludicrously attired as a Leprechaun, apologising to Anna for his drunken brother-in-law breaking her nose. A very successful line of humour follows in the subsequent scenes that the characters share, in no small part owing to the comic timing and delivery of Shepherd in an impressive professional debut. There is (of course) an overreliance on the unexpected expletive for laughs (Janet’s use of the f-word is the only time her scenes don’t ring true), but Ellis shows considerable potential as a comic writer.
All of this is aided by the masterful performance of Jasmine Blackborow as Anna, who completely holds the attention of the audience throughout the 100-minute duration of the play, shifting from moments of devastating despair to dry humour and other strategies designed to cope with the relentless exhaustion generated by her career and the lack of support she finds from her equally weary superior (Catherine Cusack). Although in relatively few scenes, Cusack gives as complex a performance as the rest of the cast in this superbly directed production.
Runs until 3 December 2022
The Reviews Hub Score
Could be more political
