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Dates of run: until October 25
Greenwich Theatre, London
Writer: Joe Penhall
Cast: John Michie, Rhianne Barreto, Matthew Morrison
Director: James Haddrell
Running time: Approximately 2 hours 30 minutes, including interval
In the quarter of a century since the first staging of Joe Penhall’s exploration of how the system fails to serve the most vulnerable and potentially most dangerous in society horribly little progress has been made in delivering reform.
That alone makes the case for this revival that, in a nod to changing, rather than improving times, replaces one of the two male psychiatrists in the original with a woman Dr Rubina Farooqui played by Rhianne Barreto.
As an ethnically Asian career woman with a wife, she is diametrically opposed to her old school, terribly English supervisor Dr Robert Smith, a rugby-loving, smoking, drinking man’s man.
Sandwiched between the two, Matthew Morrison is Christopher, who possibly has borderline personality disorder, which would place him on the border between neurotic and psychotic. He may even be the full-blown schizophrenic it would be unthinkable to send out into the community, as proposed by Smith and opposed by Farooqui.
Equally, he may be at least as sane as the two psychiatrists squabbling over his future.
Under James Haddrell’s direction, the tension and uncertainty mount as Morrison’s Christopher is convincingly volatile and the doctors supposedly caring for him are by turns plausible and completely unreasonable. We have some sense of the bewilderment the Christophers of our society must feel as they struggle to interpret the world.
Penhall’s script deftly packs in literary and psychiatric references. It quotes Paul Eluard’s “la terre est bleu comme une orange” as tenuous back-up to the central issue that for Christopher oranges appear bright blue, while psychiatrist R D Laing’s maxim that “the human species is the only species that’s inherently unsafe” is the pretext for Smith to espouse the view that apparent madness is a response to social context rather than primarily determined by the nature of the brain. The theory is particularly convenient given the lack of available psychiatric beds.
The weakness of this worthy revival is that its length diffuses the initially sharp focus. I also found myself craving more of the humour sporadically delivered by Morrison’s compelling Christopher that is the production’s main vehicle for implying there is any hope for humanity.
Blue/Orange
Dates of run: until October 25
Greenwich Theatre, London
Writer: Joe Penhall
Cast: John Michie, Rhianne Barreto, Matthew Morrison
Director: James Haddrell
Running time: Approximately 2 hours 30 minutes, including interval
In the quarter of a century since the first staging of Joe Penhall’s exploration of how the system fails to serve the most vulnerable and potentially most dangerous in society horribly little progress has been made in delivering reform.
That alone makes the case for this revival that, in a nod to changing, rather than improving times, replaces one of the two male psychiatrists in the original with a woman Dr Rubina Farooqui played by Rhianne Barreto.
As an ethnically Asian career woman with a wife, she is diametrically opposed to her old school, terribly English supervisor Dr Robert Smith, a rugby-loving, smoking, drinking man’s man.
Sandwiched between the two, Matthew Morrison is Christopher, who possibly has borderline personality disorder, which would place him on the border between neurotic and psychotic. He may even be the full-blown schizophrenic it would be unthinkable to send out into the community, as proposed by Smith and opposed by Farooqui.
Equally, he may be at least as sane as the two psychiatrists squabbling over his future.
Under James Haddrell’s direction, the tension and uncertainty mount as Morrison’s Christopher is convincingly volatile and the doctors supposedly caring for him are by turns plausible and completely unreasonable. We have some sense of the bewilderment the Christophers of our society must feel as they struggle to interpret the world.
Penhall’s script deftly packs in literary and psychiatric references. It quotes Paul Eluard’s “la terre est bleu comme une orange” as tenuous back-up to the central issue that for Christopher oranges appear bright blue, while psychiatrist R D Laing’s maxim that “the human species is the only species that’s inherently unsafe” is the pretext for Smith to espouse the view that apparent madness is a response to social context rather than primarily determined by the nature of the brain. The theory is particularly convenient given the lack of available psychiatric beds.
The weakness of this worthy revival is that its length diffuses the initially sharp focus. I also found myself craving more of the humour sporadically delivered by Morrison’s compelling Christopher that is the production’s main vehicle for implying there is any hope for humanity.
Barbara Lewis © 2025.
By Barbara Lewis • added recently on London Grip, plays, theatre • Tags: Barbara Lewis, plays, theatre