Wednesday 14th December
The Atrium, Cardiff
Having the audience enter early, with the patient already on stage in the hospital bed, bathed in red light and having lilting instrumental music with intermittent bird song playing, The Patient, by Luke Nixon and produced by the Little Bird Theatre Company, instantly established a dreamlike atmosphere reminiscent of the often blurred boundaries between sleep and reality.
The play centres on the character of George (Joshua Phillips), who’s in a coma but seems to be miraculously brought round by a mysterious character, Decca (Deborah Riggs), living under his hospital bed. George is brought round to see his fiancĂ©e, Rosie (Liz Schaming), and his friend Shaun (Liam Wheeler) comes to visit him and a tangled web of deceit and betrayal is revealed. Rosie’s affair with Shaun is far from straightforward and involves a large amount of violence and intimidation. Decca offers George the opportunity to properly wake up in order to sort out the way his life is going. The play was a great balance of humour and drama, with moments of comedy such as with Bautista (James Davies), the cleaner, singing to his sweeping brush, contrasting sharply with Shane hitting Rosie and the underlying tension of domestic violence in the narrative. Rosie seems to accept the situation with Shaun, which makes for uncomfortable viewing. Joshua Phillips, as George, was able to convey a range of emotions extremely well and even cried convincingly, which is incredibly hard to do. The use of the small stage area was well planned out and the close proximity of the audience to the action established a greater level of intensity. Using the hospital bed for several characters to interact on in different ways worked well; its uses ranged from heated conversations with characters sat at angles to each other, to Decca straddling George in more light-hearted moments. Having Decca take George to the window while Rosie and Shaun stood talking to an empty bed created an eerie visual out of body experience which worked well and was a good use of space. The double edged tone of humour and pain was also present throughout Lou McDade’s performance of Emily as a compassionate, yet unfulfilled nurse who finds solace in her patient.
There is a great importance placed on questioning throughout, from the obvious, “Who is Decca?” to wondering about the nature of the affair between Rosie and Shaun, where Rosie runs off to, as well as the characters themselves questioning each other about their lives and if they’re happy with them. The ambiguity surrounding Decca remains unsolved, though it does, at times, feel as if she is George’s conscience and represents his hidden desires he knows are there but won’t acknowledge, but provides a mechanism for accessing them. Echoes of Doctor Faustus are heard in the play with the notion that poor George has made a pact with an unearthly spirit and sold his soul in exchange for a few years of happiness and achievement. Further to these mystical and supernatural elements of the play is a tree that has leaves with magical properties, which both Decca and Bautista seem to be able to channel. Bautista later acknowledges that he was training to be a doctor in South Africa but some people found his methods questionable. Again, there is a lovely consistency with the ideas of magic, the unknown and the spiritual world converging with reality juxtaposed with the constant questioning that life involves. It is this unknown that, even though it leads to more questions, also provides solutions, even if they are merely temporary ones.
For a totally unfunded, independent enterprise, Little Bird Theatre Company certainly managed to create a thought-provoking and well-staged piece reminding us of the value, as well as the cost, of love and life.
words LUCY MENON