Hampstead; Menier Chocolate Factor; Vaudeville, London
Debut playwright Ella Road conjures a potent dystopia, Penelope Wilton is perfection in a sharp David Hare revival, and Shakespeare’s Dark Lady finds her voice
There is an extraordinary moment in The Phlebotomist when a character is given a low mark – 2.2 out of 10 – and the audience gasps in dismay. It is as if Stephen Hawking had been given a D for GCSE physics, or Simon Russell Beale awarded a single star for Hamlet. Except that this mark is for a complete genetic assessment – and the result means that all possibilities for the future have been changed.
In her assured first play, Ella Road creates a coherent dystopia. By means of blood testing, everyone is measured for every possible challenge to health – diabetes, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s – and awarded an overall rating. It is chilling that this rapidly seems normal, though scarcely surprising – have we ever before been so obsessed with marking everything? Chilling, too, how Road’s new categories appear inevitable: “subs” for those rated below standard, and “ratist” – cleverly only a whisper away from “racist” – for those who mind too much about people’s ranking. Terrific videos designed by Louise Rhoades-Brown extend the reach of the action. In a wrenching sequence, a beaming couple whose first child was born prematurely, blind and not strong, explain that they briskly decided to move on to a more robust version: they want to encourage others to know their rights.
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