This is an innovative production with many unusual and avant garde features. The acting is superb and breathes life into this curious medical condition, Functional Neurological Disorder. Still Ill seeks to give enlightenment without being able to offer any solutions to the conundrum.
Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?
Still Ill is a play about Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a contentious disease of which is little is known or understood. It is a condition in which the body fails to obey the conscious demands of the sufferer. There is no medical evidence of cause and so the effect is an open question. Still Ill is in its premier season at the New Diorama theatre.
The play, developed by the Kandinsky theatre company, credits the production team as co-writers: Director James Yeatman, Al Smith and producer Lauren Mooney. There was collaboration with medical experts in the field and with actual patients in the efforts to ensure that the condition was portrayed authentically. A chance meeting with actress Harriet Webb revealed that those patients who attended the opening night had only praise for the thoroughness of the coverage.
For such a dark topic there was plenty of humour in the evening generated as much by the situations as the dialogue. Some sections are irrelevant or extended beyond what’s necessary to advance the narrative and this slows the flow of the play. The humour in scenes, like the casting session, compensate for a propensity for prolonging these scenes.
Sophie is the female protagonist who suffers FND, starting with a left hand that is stuck in a claw shape but progressing to paralysis in the right leg. She is played by Sophie Steer who is charismatic in the role. Her commitment to the distress of the young woman suddenly facing a mysterious but debilitating illness ensures that her performance is authentic.
Supporting Still Ill’s central character are two actors who both play a multitude of roles. Hamish Macdougall begins the play as a series of medical students, but his central role is Mark, the brother of Sophie. This multiplicity of roles allows Macdougall lots of opportunity to showcase his flexibility. As the students in the opening scene, and as the actor in the casting scene, he shows a flair for comedy, and as Mark he tackles the more complex role with ease. He begins Mark’s scenes as supportive older brother and transfigures over time to unsympathetic carer when Sophie’s condition remains serious but inexplicable.
The third performer is Harriet Webb who also plays an army of different characters including the fine timing of the comic director in the casting session. It falls to one of Webb’s characters to give Sophie the only reasonable medical explanation of FND.
There are some unusual elements in this production of Still Ill. Zac Gvirtman is a versatile musician who sits on the side of the stage behind keyboards and a variety of percussion instruments. Gvirtman provides a live musical commentary throughout as both comic punctuation and also as aural support in the more serious scenes. This is an innovative touch that adds flavour and lifts the piece beyond the ordinary.
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Also on stage is the audio visual technician Jo Walker. There are three screens on the set. Sometimes they show graphic images that represent the disorder, sometimes they are blank. Unusual effects involving human interaction with video screens and objects add interest to early scenes.
Most interestingly there are live video feeds of the action on stage. In the casting session they show what a camera sees but also there are scenes between brother and sister -communication via computer. Mark is seen in a corner of the stage talking to camera and Sophie is centre stage in her home. The video design has been achieved by Harry Yeatman.
The final scene is compelling watching. The situations of brother and sister are reversed and it is Mark who is incapacitated in a hospital bed. Sophie is furious. Where she had done nothing to bring about her FND, her brother Mark is in trouble as a result of his own actions.
It is a bitter irony.