Theatre review: Sick

Published on Tuesday 23 March 2010 19:28

SICK **** CUMBERNAULD THEATRE

TELL most adults that they're about to watch a solo clown show about life in a hospital bed, and most of them would probably discover a sudden pressing need to rush home – or into the pub.

They'd be wrong, though; because Martin Danziger of Theatre Modo and solo performer Suzie Ferguson have created a show so gently brilliant in its exploration of a whole neglected range of human experience, that it eventually transcends pure hospital comedy to act as a timely reminder that – turn our heads as we will from the fact of physical illness and decay – eventually it catches up with us all.

It's not that the show – based on Danziger's own recent experience as a cancer patient, and set to tour hospitals before a run next week at the Tron – is anything less than funny. In 60 brilliantly observed minutes, it explores those frustrations so familiar both to those who have endured stays in hospital and those who have tried to help loved ones through them.

Propped up in her spotty hospital gown, red nose in place, Ferguson's little patient peers in bafflement at the inedible food that appears on her tray, communes furtively with her mobile phone, does her physio, reads a trashy celebrity magazine, suffers an infuriating itch under her bandage, indulges in a few romantic fantasies, and endures a night so disrupted by snores, groans and beeping noises from elsewhere in the ward that she resorts to major vandalism.

Yet the show also has a strong narrative drive, leading to a final run-in with the big one, the fear of death. And what it expresses – with few words, and tons of skill and humanity – is the truth, so often denied in our culture, that our flawed bodies finally make clowns and fools of us all; but not in a way that makes life less sweet, or less worth living.