This little gem of a play about the NHS is like a punch in the gut, brief but memorable. It is partly a paean to the founding values of the NHS and partly a polemic about its dismantlement, and while it does have a plot, the scenes are more like a series of sketches interspersed with singing, dancing, and jokes. It loosely follows one family’s various encounters with the NHS with all the mishaps, staff shortages, mess, and terror that a brush with the health service can entail. Early on, the son is told he has a ‘prostate the size of a space hopper’ while his mother who is admitted to a fictional North London hospital called ‘The Harrington’ notices a ‘small stool in the shower tray and I don’t mean the three legged kind.’ It is overtly political in places with characters often directly soliloquising to the audience. Memorably, one of the cast members dressed as a weather girl talks with an asinine smile about the forecast for the NHS in the regions: needless to say the outlook is poor, especially for the North.
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