Theatre: I'm Not Running

Life & Times Theatre I’M NOT RUNNING Patricia Gibson National Theatre, London, trained in medicine until 31 January 2019 at Newcastle where she had WILL SHE? WON’T SHE? an unsatisfactory In the 2001 general election Dr Richard relationship with Taylor, previously a consultant physician at handsome Jack Kidderminster General Hospital, stood as Gould, son of a an independent candidate, largely on the famous left-wing single issue of the closure of the hospital’s academic. Her Accident and Emergency department. mother, meanwhile, He annihilated the opposition, unseating was drinking herself the Labour member and coming in with to death in Hastings, a majority of 18 000. He remained at the town of Hare’s Westminster for 10 years. birth. Later, while During the previous decade David Hare working in Corby had written three highly acclaimed plays Hospital, she is about British institutions — the clergy warned by a patient (Racing Demon, 1990), the law (Murmuring whose life she has Judges, 1991), and politics (The Absence of saved by doing Joshua McGuire and Siân Brooke in I’m Not Running by David Hare. Photo: Mark War, 1993). In 2006, The Vertical Hour opened an emergency Douet. on Broadway, not in London, because of a tracheostomy, that falling out with the National Theatre. The the hospital has central topic of the play was the Iraq War. become the target One of the characters, played by Bill Nighy, of government cuts and will be closed down. of three-dimensional triangle of which the was Oliver Lucas, who had been a renal She leads a successful campaign to save audience is the hypotenuse, placed in the physician, now working in general practice the hospital, and becomes a celebrity — the middle of a large dark stage, which focuses and palliative care. He described the Iraq angel of the NHS. The world of public life the mind on the words. There are also campaign as a botched operation carried out is at her feet. She, like Richard Taylor, is some very funny press conferences and a by inept surgeons. elected to parliament where, unsurprisingly, lot of memorable sparring in the general Now, in I’m Not Running, Hare takes she comes across Jack, now a smooth areas of male:female relationships, fidelity, on the health service and Labour politics career Labour politician with high ambitions. and honesty. My attention hardly wavered, among, characteristically, a handful of other The power relationships and emotional and I would certainly have given the play big ideas, and one of his recurrent themes dynamics of their student affair come back more stars than a number of the broadsheet — the interplay between private lives and to haunt them as they manoeuvre and bicker reviewers. public action. about who should be going for the top job — Seeing I’m Not Running was a nice will she run or won’t counterpoint to Alan Bennett’s new play Siân Brooke and Alex Hassell in I’m Not Running by David Hare. Photo: Mark she? Douet. Hallelujah, which I saw at the Bridge Theatre Gibson’s press — the beautiful new theatre bang opposite officer and Gould’s the Tower of London — a few weeks ago. parliamentary Bennett’s was an altogether more jittery and assistant bring anxious portrayal of the declining health and additional interest to social care infrastructure, and the dubious the story, although it joys of community singing in an old people’s could almost have home. At 71, and 13 years Bennett’s junior, been told without Hare has plenty of time to take a more them. Indeed, I enjoyed forensic look at the sunlit uplands. this play partly for what it didn’t contain — there Roger Jones, was no clever dickery Editor, BJGP, London. with sets or special Email: [email protected] effects, no music as far as I can remember, I’m Not Running is at the National Theatre, London, and no daft costumes. until 31 January. On that date the final performance, which starts at 7 pm, will be screened nationally via The action — most of the excellent NT Live. it two-handed dialogue — takes place in a kind DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X700037 582 British Journal of General Practice, December 2018.

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