Doctor who’s close to the (funny) bone
This Is Going To Hurt (Apollo Theatre, London) Verdict: Queasy rider ★★★✩✩ The Great Gatsby (Immersive LDN) Verdict: Fizzy Fitzgerald ★★★★✩ Lone Flyer (Watermill, Newbury) Verdict: Little gem ★★★★✩
GIVEN the fevered state of the nation, re- opening the West End with a hospital doctor who’s gone rogue was a stroke of mischievous genius. The doc in question is Adam Kay, and the show is based on his best- selling book, This Is Going To Hurt. What he’s not offering is a cure for our Covid confusion. Quite the opposite.
Kay gave up working as a gynaecologist ten years ago, after doing a Caesarean section that went horribly wrong. Since then, he’s been dealing with his demons by turning his medical diary i nto comedy. But as a form of therapy, this 60-minute show makes The Exorcist look like CBeebies’ In The Night Garden.
Kay speaks of the NHS as if it was a limitless Grand Guignol of horror stories; and he preps us with grisly anecdotes — including one about a student who ‘degloved’ (scraped all the skin off his hands, if you must know) on an illadvised night out.
Mercifully, he also has a Tom Lehrer-ish gift for musical spoofs, played on an electronic keyboard.
A GP consultation is set to the tune of The Bangles’ Eternal Flame, and there’s a Lionel Richie smokers’ ballad ( ‘ Wheezy like Sunday morning’).
Performing in scrubs, behind giant bottles of pills, Kay has the shell- shocked look of a man who’s seen too much, too young. He went down a storm with the NHS staff at my performance; but nonmedics may want to approach with caution.
( The show runs at the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue, until November 15 before a residency at the Palace Theatre, Charing Cross Road, from December 21-January 3). THE Great Gatsby was one of the first interactive shows to report problems with audiences getting a bit too frisky when it opened in 2018. Covid has added an extra layer of taboos (though, thanks to social distancing, groping shouldn’t be a problem).
But the amazing thing about this fresh, fizzy performance, in which we pretend to be guests at a house party hosted by 1920s American millionaire Jay Gatsby, is t hat i t’ s happening at all.
The show is managed along strict Covid guidelines, allowing us to be scattered about a huge indoor space, and served drinks at a safe distance.
Only the nattily dressed actors are maskless, welcoming us to the party and ushering us from the auditorium to share gossip in boudoirs.
FITTINGLY, it’s cast with handsome young people who look as though they’ve been plucked from the pages of Vogue or Vanity Fair. As Gatsby, Craig Hamilton is an enigma in a pink suit, oozing the savoir faire of a seasoned jet-setter.
There are musical numbers performed on a piano, includi ng some Ed Sheeran- i sh crooning from Lucas Jones. But most impressive is the jitterbug dancing, which sets the night alight.
It’s not as deep and meaningful as Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, but who wants that at a party anyway? I was quite happy to top up on the fizz and enjoy the show.
AT THE Watermill, they’re reviving Lone Flyer, Ade Morris’s gem of a play about aviator Amy Johnson — the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia in 1930.
Born in Hull in 1903, Johnson set her heart on the Civil Service, but wound up i nstead i n a London solicitor’s office, where she discovered her passion for flying. The two- person show uses nothing more than a set of antique suitcases, travel trunks and a luggage trolley that doubles as Amy’s cockpit in the Gypsy Moth airplane s he f l ew f r om Croydon to Oz. And she’s perfectly cast in Hannah Edwards (pictured below), with her bonny face alternately foggy with self- doubt and l uminous with sunshine. Benedict Salter has a light touch in his multiple roles — as Amy’s affably supportive father, her cold fish Swiss lover and eventually her husband (and fellow pilot) Jim. Salter also adds atmosphere, striking melancholy chords on a cello. It can be a bumpy ride, cutting back and f orth i n time and space, and the end is a little confusing. But Edwards beautifully bottles Johnson’s intrepid spirit.