'Drip, Drip, Drip' fitted perfectly into the studio space at the Waterside Theatre, Sale. This was the third performance of 'Drip, Drip,Drip' in front an audience, the company who produced the play Pipe Line Theatre even had a Q and A after the show to aid in their developmentof the piece. Jon Welch the writer/director is definitely on to something with his 'love letter' to the NHS, this is an astounding piece of studio theatre, Pipeline is a company deserving of greater recognition.
It's difficult to summarise, there's so much action in one play. The main protagonist David Jeffs a far-right, discredited professor, once nationalist, has collapsed during his speech about Karl Brandt a Nazi euthanasia doctor. Jeff is confused believing he is still giving his speech while coming to terms with being in hospital, a cancer patient being treated by a diverse NHS team. Jeffs encounters other patients and dreams of seeing his son, as the cancer spreads through his blood and he looses his battle he is also visited by Karl Brandt on his rounds of the ward. We see the stories of the doctors treating David and fellow patient Leon, characters of different nationalities and religion brought together in a ward strained to breaking point.
This has been the strongest example of an ensemble cast I have seen in a long while. Even though Titus Adam played the definite 'lead role' of David Jeffs, his character acted as the framing for the stories of several doctors and nurses working at the NHS. Shereener Browne and Claudius Peters each played three characters, changing accents and physicality appropriately they created entirely different people on stage. Their performances were meticulous and authentic, there was nothing performative about them, they were entirely believable.
In bold contrast to the superb natural acting Titus Adams would suddenly address the audience smashing through the fourth wall, at one moment his character Jeff held up the programme and reminded the audience the play had been written by a white middle aged man. Some audience members critiqued the white male dominance of voice in theatre, but the story Pipe Line told with this show chose to include a diverse array of characters with a diverse cast, representing differentstories developed in R&D with the cast, though David was our main protagonist the other characters definitely had some good measure of the spotlight, their stories were touching and had emotional resonance that touched the audience so that when we saw them struggling to cope under thepressure of working at the NHS we had real sympathy for them.
The set of 'Drip, Drip Drip' was highly innovative, two screens of white mesh and blue curtain, the same as you would see in a hospital to separate patients, and a hydraulic hospital bed were dragged by the actors to different positions on stage to create a multitude of spaces. The slickness of this blocking must have been choreographed with intense precision, the whole stage was utilised and the curtains moved creating shapes, concealing and revealing actors. The curtains were also used for projection to create scenes in Africa. A stunningly beautiful moment was when Peters gave a monologue as the character Daniel and a projection of Daniel as a child was projected on the left side of the screen and actress Browne was behind the screen playing the mother being tended to by Dr Karl Adolf. The shadowed action behind the screen had a hazed focus with voices narrating from the other side of the stage, the effect was filmic. How they drew attention, pulled focus from one area of the stage to another, made places in different countries, time zones appear, testament to the creative powers of the designers Alan and Jude Minden.
I found their crafting charming and highly engaging, there is so much to this production I could have commented on, the whole piece is full of wonderful details that makes this deserving of a second viewing. I would recommend following this company and definitely catching them when youcan as many times as you can.
Reviewer - Kerry Ely
on - 2/3/19
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