Grace Under Pressure

This is a prime example of ‘verbatim theatre’, plays created from interviews with specific people - in this case doctors and nurses talk about their training and practice in Victorian and NSW hospitals. The dialogue is chopped up and divided between four actors, all equally good, and the resultant dish served for just a few days at the Seymour Centre. It’s striking enough to go much further.

The actors involved - Renee Lim, Rose Maher, Wendy Strehlow and Sal Sharah - are adept at getting all the ‘ers’ and ‘ums’ and ‘ars’ right, of representing disjointed speech exactly as recorded by David Williams and Paul Dwyer over many months. This is combined with stories, sometimes quite shocking, of long hours spent in understaffed hospitals with exhausted colleagues. 

There are stories from 1983, when life for nurses was much more formal, through the more subtle bullying and belittling that goes on behind the scenes today. Wendy Strehlow gives us a 36-hour, non-stop horror session of a Junior Doctor at a country hospital following a multiple road accident. Renee Lim takes us to the very edge of The Gap as her Consultant Physician is ready to surrender to the pressure.

Some of the stories involve hospital life under such intense strain ‘the general public would be alarmed’ if they heard. Well, we’ve heard, and this mix of good humour and humiliations is ready for a wider public.

With a decent budget, director David Williams has got his cast to perfection. His setting, featuring 8 standing and 4 seated microphones, is not so successful. What point is being made by his cast speaking into these many mikes?

Lighting is by Richard Manner and the continuous music is from Gail Priest.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Heidrun Lohr