![]() It is, in the end, a captivating and profound argument against absolutes. It will doubtless ruffle feathers, however removed we feel at the outset, its arguments bedding down deep and forcing us out of our own entrenched certainties, however briefly. A play about mortality, it ends with hope. There are brilliant contradictions in The Doctor: unapologetically cerebral, it hooks us in emotionally, expanding in our chests. Hildegard Bechtler’s set of tables, doors and a kettle revolves slowly and almost ceaselessly as we see each argument dissected from every angle, and certainties slowly yanked apart to leave the grey exposed. It is not just the play’s ideas that fizz: Natasha Chivers’ lighting is pitched for stark dramatic highs, Tom Gibbons’ music and sound design contain dread rumbles of drums and disturbing single notes that are left hovering. The striking casting – white actors play black parts, women play men, to leave us in a morass of uncertainty – feels like an unnecessary layer of complication until its power lands with the simple use of the word “uppity” by Ruth, and we are left reflecting on language, and our own assumptions. Their deep relationship led them to be accused of being in a romantic student-teacher relationship. He meets Hye Jung, a reckless student who happens to be his favorite neighbors granddaughter and turns out to be his student. Ruth is almost unique in a world where everyone is intent on using identity for their own ends, but where does her integrity stand, the play asks, in relation to her arrogance? The gender reversal of the role carries its own complicated irony: Ruth is a woman stranded in a man’s world who is phlegmatic, patrician, overtly performing masculinity in order to survive. Ji Hong is a doctor who decided to become a high school teacher. Juliet Stevenson plays the doctor with counterintuitive brilliance, starting at top volume and dialling down to present the quiet tragedy of a remarkable doctor who bears the fatal flaw of arrogance. She refuses to see her own humanness within medicine. But we also see her cleaving to a tyrannical belief in the neutrality of medical science. We see the antisemitic hate towards Ruth, and the misogynistic satisfaction in bringing a high-powered woman “down to earth”. Director Lee Byung-Hoon & screen writer Kim Yi-Young previously worked together in the 2010 MBC period drama 'Dong Yi' and the 2007 MBC period drama 'Lee San, Wind of the Palace'. Photograph: Manuel HarlanĪll the arguments are nuanced and thoughtful. 'The King’s Doctor' follows a veterinarian in the Joseon Period as he goes through difficulties to become a royal physician. That refusal sparks online protests and government intervention outside the medical centre, and an aggressive jostling for power within it, while rank antisemitic scapegoating of the doctor ranges across the board.Ĭertainties yanked apart … Stevenson with Juliet Garricks as Charlie. Its plot is relatively straightforward: Ruth Wolff, the Jewish director of a leading medical institute, refuses entry to a Catholic priest to read the last rites to a 14-year-old patient who is dying of a botched, self-administered abortion. Yet the effects are slowly, searingly electric and you are unlikely to see anything in the West End that comes with the same amounts of tension, combative intellectual complexity and sheer bare-toothed drama as Icke’s reworking of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 Viennese “comedy”, Professor Bernhardi.Īgain directed by Icke, this production is a very close replica of the original at the Almeida theatre. Other Harpo productions like Dr Phil (2002) are a permanent fixture on MBC4, along with a number of mostly US reality shows, soaps and series (Kattan. It is often static in its action, abrasive in its tone and revels in its flagrant theatricality. T he return of Robert Icke’s play about medical ethics, identity politics and antisemitism brings all the same contentions as its original run. ![]() MHRA 'MBC', All Acronyms, 4 June 2023, Bluebook All Acronyms, MBC (Jun. MBC, All Acronyms, viewed June 4, 2023, MLA All Acronyms. Retrieved June 4, 2023, from Chicago All Acronyms. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Quote Copy APA All Acronyms. With Freddie Highmore, Hill Harper, Richard Schiff, Christina Chang. ![]()
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