Outpatient

What makes this autobiographical play so strong and so memorable is how much of herself has been invested in it by writer and performer Harriet Madeley when creating Oupatient with the production company Crowded Room. Crowded Room specialise is dramatising true stories and this is one that is both personally and professionally stunning.

Harriet has taken her own life-threatening diagnosis and turned it into 70 minutes of pure theatre. Changing the central character’s name to Olive, and making her a journalist rather than a playwright, leads into a compelling story that sweeps you away on tidal wave of emotion and humour. For as experienced in life there is much humour to be found when facing mortality.

Olive decides that her big break as a journalist will come by writing about what happens to a person or persons when they are faced with news that they are dying. She goes as far as to partly fake an illness to obtain access to the palliative care ward of a hospital, which she does. But then, following her own tests, she discovers seems at first a casual diagnosis of a disease called PSC (Primary sclerosing cholangitis). She is told she has had it for 10 years and there is nothing she should take or do, and most importantly not to Google it. Which she of course immediately does, only to discover the normal life expectancy of the disease is just ten years.

Faced with her own mortality her whole life and upcoming marriage to her partner Tess is thrown into question. Is she doing things for the right reason, will she have the time. It is now her major article takes on a different meaning and with the help of Lizzie who contacts her about the article she learns to push aside the bleakness and celebrate what life you have left.

What makes this piece so rich is how it is staged and the central performance. With only a small treadmill and a yoga ball, Madeley physically and dramatically takes the audience on what is the most thrilling and life-affirming ride. Her performance is so perfectly pitched, and the clever use of recorded voices for the other characters so well timed, that you forget this is a one person show.

Director Madelaine Moore has cleverly stripped back any fuss and what is left is a thought provoking, downright funny and yet heart-wrenching love story. With one a massive difference, and that is the ever-present realisation that at some point we all have to die.

A play that everyone who thinks their life is fulfilling now should definitely see.

Photo credit: Abi Mowbray

Five Stars