Writer and Director: Lucia Martinez
“Once you’re in, the game begins. As long as your piss is yellow, everything will be fine. Will you find out the big secret? Only The Room will decide if you’re worth it.”
Mixing elements of physical comedy, absurdist theatre, Squid Game, Commedia dell ’arte and mime, The Room of Piss is a surreal, funny and deeply-felt patient’s eye view of chronic illness. After an acclaimed stint at the Voilà! Theatre festival in 2024 as a short sketch, it’s returned, slightly longer, and with a third player, for a limited London run.
Writer Lucia Martinez has polycystic kidney disease (PCKD), a painful chronic condition involving bleeding and painful crystalline stones. The play was initiated during an acute PCKD episode, requiring months of hospitalisation in Italy, to show medics how the process was perceived by patients.
Where’s the fun in that? Well, Martinez has gone after it, hurtling around the theme of chronic illness and the chaos, terror and insight it can bring. Thoroughly-versed in physical comedy and mime, Martinez has assembled a similarly accomplished cast: charismatic Giulia Del Fabbro and energetic Sophie Stockwell.
The Room of Piss is envisioned as a venue where the strictures, monotony and revelations of chronic illness are played out. It’s presaged by darkness, ticking clocks and the deep, breathy voice of Narrator Del Fabbro. The Protagonist (Martinez) is wide-eyed, innocent and limber in her optimistic bright yellow t-shirt. She stretches, slaps her face into wakefulness and begins her day. The rules of The Room are issued.
“Piss must be yellow. Drink 4 litres of water.”
The Protagonist complies and folds into her piss curtsey crease. The seat she’s been sitting on becomes a commode, and she proudly holds aloft a cup of yellow liquid.
“Congratulations!”
And so it goes, in an intensifying frenzy of commands – “Take your pills 100 times a day!” – and increasingly panicky, fidgety acquiescence. Until the piss turns blue, and the Protagonist doesn’t know what to do with it. Finally, she drinks it, puckering then lip-smacking and eagerly trying to create more: a large bowl of blue liquid that manifests as the creepy, wheedling Blue Piss (Stockwell). “I want to be your best friend… listen.”The Protagonist complies, putting her ear up to the bowl.
Their interlude is shattered by the bustling arrival of the tie-wearing Doctor Something (Del Fabbro) and Doctor Anything (Stockwell), their names reflecting the discontinuity, conflict and confusion of modern medical care. Suitably rough-and-tumbling, they shout, “Is there a doctor in the house?” then poke each other in the chest: “You’re the doctor!”
Sticking up positive signage – RELAX! – they round on The Protagonist with a barrage of advice that becomes a repetitive mantra.“Have you tried vegetables? Exercising? Stretching? Having fun? Pretending it’s not happening? No partying, salt, sugar, drugs?”Despite their efforts the big blue bowl of piss reappears. Harbingers of insanity, Del Fabbro and Stockwell put on delicate balloon antennae and whirl around The Protagonist. Red-lit, the scene becomes a positive signage-ripping Bacchanal.
A beam of light wielded by Blue Piss rakes the stage to moody, humming electronic music, like the noise of an MRI scan. There’s moving intimacy as the beam pools in The Protagonist’s cupped hands. The light grows into a large projected circle in which Blue Piss performs shadow puppetry with her hands, making soothing stroking movements.
The Room of Piss dwells informatively on navigating through illness, accommodating and befriending it, perhaps even finding common cause. In short, being at ease with disease. Eventually. Possibly.
Those with chronic illness are highly likely to identify with the panic, bewilderment, torment, resignation and acceptance on display. As well as the feeling of having to become a self-serving guinea pig to determine which remedies work best.
Although it’s fairly satisfying and complete at 40 minutes long, some of the concepts aired in The Room of Piss deserve greater consideration. Fortunately, the plan is to develop it into a longer and more complex piece. Audience reaction is most welcome in this process, as are donations to the kidney disease charities highlighted in the show’s web page.
Reviewed on 22 June 2025
