Reviews
London Theatre Reviews
*****
Christopher O'Dea-Giordano
The fifth production from Pipeline Theatre, and writer Jon Welch, Drip Drip Drip tells the tale of an NHS pushed to its absolute limits – this time not by Conservative budget cuts, but by testing the fundamental principle of care for absolutely everyone regardless, when a team of immigrant doctors and staff find themselves compelled to make a dying Nazi apologist comfortable.
It’s a play firmly in the urgently political, meta-theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht, merged with the visceral social realism of Jim Cartwright, and the resulting explosive combination produces sincere excellence so outstanding that it almost transcends theatre and becomes a witnessed experience of life itself.
Welch’s extraordinary, meticulous writing is full of real life, shining lyricism, inexhaustible dynamism, and an abiding empathy and love for all of humanity so acute that it feels autobiographical – something made even more remarkable by the fact that Welch is a middle-aged white man with a life nothing like the characters he so perfectly imagines in his work.
The first-rate writing is carried by the work’s other greatest strength, a superb professional cast, all of whom perform flawlessly, and bring everything to life so recognisably that all awareness of the artifice of theatre seemingly disappears, with the audience liable to be left feeling less as if they are watching a play, and more as though they are stealing a shameful, perverse look through a window, into real, suffering peoples’ wretched lives. It seems that Welch has not merely written characters, nor are the cast simply playing parts – but that they have brought genuine human beings to full and vivid life, as all great writing and performance should.
One could easily meet any of these wonderfully-realised people on the street, let alone see them in a theatre play. David Keller is superb as the rambling, scatter-brained academic facing death as a disgraced Nazi sympathiser; Alan Munden totally convinces as the hospital porter who could be any oddball full of nasty little prejudices towards every sort of othered person, whether he means to have them or not; Lydia Bakelmun perfectly embodies the horrendous strains of professional and personal life both as a Muslim doctor and as a woman of colour; and at the true heart of the work are Girum Bekele and Michael Workeye as two loving brothers, struggling refugees torn apart by cruel happenstance, who together send the work hurtling towards its utterly heartbreaking finale, in which one struggles not to weep bitter tears of righteous indignation and fury at the sheer damned inhumanity. There are not enough superlatives for it all.
Ably assisting all this brilliance is the set design of Jude and Alan Munden. Visually sparse in a suitably Brechtian way, allowing the focus to fall on the excellent performances and writing, it nevertheless proves versatile for being so compact, and capable of its own visually striking performances. Some clever use of projection also aids the sense of place and character nicely throughout.
In all, a simply superb production. Flawlessly performed, powerful, righteously angry, poetic, and emotionally devastating. A spectacular tour-de-force that demands to be seen and heard. Do so.
http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=2509
It’s a play firmly in the urgently political, meta-theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht, merged with the visceral social realism of Jim Cartwright, and the resulting explosive combination produces sincere excellence so outstanding that it almost transcends theatre and becomes a witnessed experience of life itself.
Welch’s extraordinary, meticulous writing is full of real life, shining lyricism, inexhaustible dynamism, and an abiding empathy and love for all of humanity so acute that it feels autobiographical – something made even more remarkable by the fact that Welch is a middle-aged white man with a life nothing like the characters he so perfectly imagines in his work.
The first-rate writing is carried by the work’s other greatest strength, a superb professional cast, all of whom perform flawlessly, and bring everything to life so recognisably that all awareness of the artifice of theatre seemingly disappears, with the audience liable to be left feeling less as if they are watching a play, and more as though they are stealing a shameful, perverse look through a window, into real, suffering peoples’ wretched lives. It seems that Welch has not merely written characters, nor are the cast simply playing parts – but that they have brought genuine human beings to full and vivid life, as all great writing and performance should.
One could easily meet any of these wonderfully-realised people on the street, let alone see them in a theatre play. David Keller is superb as the rambling, scatter-brained academic facing death as a disgraced Nazi sympathiser; Alan Munden totally convinces as the hospital porter who could be any oddball full of nasty little prejudices towards every sort of othered person, whether he means to have them or not; Lydia Bakelmun perfectly embodies the horrendous strains of professional and personal life both as a Muslim doctor and as a woman of colour; and at the true heart of the work are Girum Bekele and Michael Workeye as two loving brothers, struggling refugees torn apart by cruel happenstance, who together send the work hurtling towards its utterly heartbreaking finale, in which one struggles not to weep bitter tears of righteous indignation and fury at the sheer damned inhumanity. There are not enough superlatives for it all.
Ably assisting all this brilliance is the set design of Jude and Alan Munden. Visually sparse in a suitably Brechtian way, allowing the focus to fall on the excellent performances and writing, it nevertheless proves versatile for being so compact, and capable of its own visually striking performances. Some clever use of projection also aids the sense of place and character nicely throughout.
In all, a simply superb production. Flawlessly performed, powerful, righteously angry, poetic, and emotionally devastating. A spectacular tour-de-force that demands to be seen and heard. Do so.
http://www.londontheatrereviews.co.uk/post.cfm?p=2509
A Younger Theatre
*****
Nina Cave
Drip Drip Drip is set in a typical British hospital run by enthusiastic and hard-working members of all the UK’s communities, most importantly those who get tarnished by ignorant bigots as benefits scroungers, or worse.
David Keller plays an ex-professor stripped of his title for a revisionist lecture of the Nazi regime and the work of Karl Brandt within it. His Muslim Doctor Rahmiya (Lydia Bakelman) and him get on swimmingly until Rahmiya goes to his house to feed his cat and reads speeches left on his desk which expose his far-right views. Ironically for David in his dying days he is also supported by trainee nurse Daniel (Michael Workeye) an Eritrean refugee. Daniel is constantly juggling his aim of creating a better life for himself in the UK and being reunited with his beloved brother who failed to get on a truck across the channel at Calais.
Bakelman’s Rahmiya is a self-assured no-bullshit woman empowered to defend her religion and race against constant micro and macro-aggressions. Bakelman’s performance shows the strength that a Muslim woman needs to show in a society full of ignorance about their faith but also portrays her as so much more than just her religion. Rahmiya is also a vulnerable mother scared for her children after they face racist abuse, a woman broken by the tragic death of her brother from cancer aged 12, and an accomplished doctor who everyday faces ‘othering’ from colleagues and patients whilst they are just trying to do their job.
Unlike Rahmiya, Workeye’s Daniel faces life with a constant twinkle in his eye and spring in his step and simply shrugs off the prejudice that he faces. Accompanied by a soundtrack of Stormzy’s greatest hits Daniel is ready to work the hardest that he can to achieve his goals.
Both Rahmiya and Daniel live with narratives from others being forced upon them, however, Daniel shows Rahmiya that she is all too capable of this herself. When Rahmiya tries to tell Daniel his story of crossing borders he rejects her idea of what this means, and does not see how she is overcoming ‘borders’ in her own life as someone who has always lived in the UK.
This play is a story of misunderstandings of each other through lack of conversation and a listening ear. Jon Welch’s writing tells us not just about this hospital, but of a UK of diverse communities who need to find common ground to simultaneously exist.
Drip Drip Drip is a love letter to the NHS and the beauty of multiculturalism and the need to protect it. Welch and Pipeline Theatre bring us a moving, sharp and eloquent story of our modern UK and is a true joy to watch.
https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-drip-drip-drip-pleasance-theatre/
David Keller plays an ex-professor stripped of his title for a revisionist lecture of the Nazi regime and the work of Karl Brandt within it. His Muslim Doctor Rahmiya (Lydia Bakelman) and him get on swimmingly until Rahmiya goes to his house to feed his cat and reads speeches left on his desk which expose his far-right views. Ironically for David in his dying days he is also supported by trainee nurse Daniel (Michael Workeye) an Eritrean refugee. Daniel is constantly juggling his aim of creating a better life for himself in the UK and being reunited with his beloved brother who failed to get on a truck across the channel at Calais.
Bakelman’s Rahmiya is a self-assured no-bullshit woman empowered to defend her religion and race against constant micro and macro-aggressions. Bakelman’s performance shows the strength that a Muslim woman needs to show in a society full of ignorance about their faith but also portrays her as so much more than just her religion. Rahmiya is also a vulnerable mother scared for her children after they face racist abuse, a woman broken by the tragic death of her brother from cancer aged 12, and an accomplished doctor who everyday faces ‘othering’ from colleagues and patients whilst they are just trying to do their job.
Unlike Rahmiya, Workeye’s Daniel faces life with a constant twinkle in his eye and spring in his step and simply shrugs off the prejudice that he faces. Accompanied by a soundtrack of Stormzy’s greatest hits Daniel is ready to work the hardest that he can to achieve his goals.
Both Rahmiya and Daniel live with narratives from others being forced upon them, however, Daniel shows Rahmiya that she is all too capable of this herself. When Rahmiya tries to tell Daniel his story of crossing borders he rejects her idea of what this means, and does not see how she is overcoming ‘borders’ in her own life as someone who has always lived in the UK.
This play is a story of misunderstandings of each other through lack of conversation and a listening ear. Jon Welch’s writing tells us not just about this hospital, but of a UK of diverse communities who need to find common ground to simultaneously exist.
Drip Drip Drip is a love letter to the NHS and the beauty of multiculturalism and the need to protect it. Welch and Pipeline Theatre bring us a moving, sharp and eloquent story of our modern UK and is a true joy to watch.
https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-drip-drip-drip-pleasance-theatre/
My Theatre Mates
*****
Shyama Perera
At a time when headlines reduce the debate around racism to good or bad, black or white, Drip Drip Drip is a masterly exercise in exploring the grey. Does defending racists make you a racist? Does being racist mean you’re irredeemable? Is experiencing racism necessarily depleting? Can racist policies empower as well as isolate? All of these themes run through Jon Welch’s beautiful script.
We open on David, a Nazi apologist, rehearsing a lecture on Karl Brandt, head of Hitler’s ‘euthanasia programme’. The fact that Brandt loved his son, Karl Adolf, is vital to David’s argument that the Nazi should not have been hanged after his trial at Nuremberg.
Does defending racists make you a racist?
As he works through his slides, Rahmiya – a posh cancer consultant at the local hospital – is having a phone argument with her husband about childcare. When David turns up for tests and is immediately admitted, his primary concern is living long enough to deliver the lecture. Hers is organising David’s palliative care and the welfare of his beloved cat.
It is the relationship between David and Rahmiya that drives the action in Drip Drip Drip, but a lot is happening around them. Trainee nurse, Daniel, a refugee from Eritrea, is desperate to spring his brother from the jungle camp in Calais. Having escaped brutal racism at home, he has learned to manage the UK’s passive prejudice. His trick is to smile and keep moving and hope that he’ll pull the doubters along with him. Unshocked by David’s morphine-fuelled outbursts, he finds an extraordinary connection that creates a momentary friendship.
It’s different for Rahmiya. Second-generation British, and wearing a hijab by choice, it pulverises her that her children are told to ‘Go home’ when on the bus to school. She and David fall out after she sees his lecture notes. He is deeply ashamed. When she won’t discuss it, he goes on the attack. Nonetheless, she works to find a new home for his cat, and he is genuinely upset when her children are abused.
Love is redemptive
Like Roy Williams’ current play at the National Theatre, The Death of England, Drip Drip Drip exposes the conflicted British response to people who are ‘other’. Even when objecting to their presence in principle, they will protect the individual ‘others’ that they know.
This is as beautifully demonstrated in Rahmiya’s actions as David’s. David is ‘othered’ by his views – not just to Rahmiya but within our multicultural, international, NHS. Nonetheless, her final action is to save the cat that allowed her to access his humanity. Love is redemptive.
Drip Drip Drip is expertly directed by its writer, Jon Welch. David Keller as David, Lydia Bakelmun as Rahmiya, and Michael Workeye as Daniel have us in their thrall from the off. Alan Munden (who also designs with Jude Munden) and Girum Bekele are excellent supports. It’s theatre at its best.
https://mytheatremates.com/drip-drip-drip-pleasance-theatre-shyama-review-featured/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=drip-drip-drip-pleasance-theatre-shyama-review-featured
We open on David, a Nazi apologist, rehearsing a lecture on Karl Brandt, head of Hitler’s ‘euthanasia programme’. The fact that Brandt loved his son, Karl Adolf, is vital to David’s argument that the Nazi should not have been hanged after his trial at Nuremberg.
Does defending racists make you a racist?
As he works through his slides, Rahmiya – a posh cancer consultant at the local hospital – is having a phone argument with her husband about childcare. When David turns up for tests and is immediately admitted, his primary concern is living long enough to deliver the lecture. Hers is organising David’s palliative care and the welfare of his beloved cat.
It is the relationship between David and Rahmiya that drives the action in Drip Drip Drip, but a lot is happening around them. Trainee nurse, Daniel, a refugee from Eritrea, is desperate to spring his brother from the jungle camp in Calais. Having escaped brutal racism at home, he has learned to manage the UK’s passive prejudice. His trick is to smile and keep moving and hope that he’ll pull the doubters along with him. Unshocked by David’s morphine-fuelled outbursts, he finds an extraordinary connection that creates a momentary friendship.
It’s different for Rahmiya. Second-generation British, and wearing a hijab by choice, it pulverises her that her children are told to ‘Go home’ when on the bus to school. She and David fall out after she sees his lecture notes. He is deeply ashamed. When she won’t discuss it, he goes on the attack. Nonetheless, she works to find a new home for his cat, and he is genuinely upset when her children are abused.
Love is redemptive
Like Roy Williams’ current play at the National Theatre, The Death of England, Drip Drip Drip exposes the conflicted British response to people who are ‘other’. Even when objecting to their presence in principle, they will protect the individual ‘others’ that they know.
This is as beautifully demonstrated in Rahmiya’s actions as David’s. David is ‘othered’ by his views – not just to Rahmiya but within our multicultural, international, NHS. Nonetheless, her final action is to save the cat that allowed her to access his humanity. Love is redemptive.
Drip Drip Drip is expertly directed by its writer, Jon Welch. David Keller as David, Lydia Bakelmun as Rahmiya, and Michael Workeye as Daniel have us in their thrall from the off. Alan Munden (who also designs with Jude Munden) and Girum Bekele are excellent supports. It’s theatre at its best.
https://mytheatremates.com/drip-drip-drip-pleasance-theatre-shyama-review-featured/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=drip-drip-drip-pleasance-theatre-shyama-review-featured
The Upcoming
****
Laura Foulger
Among all Pipeline Theatre’s plays, Drip Drip Drip might be the densest and the most prescient. Spinning between an NHS ward and an immigration centre in Calais, it squeezes the deathbed of a Nazi sympathiser alongside the caged enclosure of an Eritrean child refugee and transforms a toilet cubicle into a lecture hall.
An immigrant nurse and Muslim doctor look after a disgraced former professor who’s obsessed with Hitler’s physician Karl Brandt: it might seem a binary concept, one that requires no further examination. But – as they’ve proved reliable in doing – Pipeline present their world with such naked humanity and such forensic care that they unpeel the outer layers and reveal the blueprint at the heart. While the subject matter is political, the play is human above all things, a presentation of these very specific characters, a “who” and a “why” rather than a neat answer.
Jon Welch’s expertly crafted script dispenses small insights and the cast of five crescendos it into something sublime. Ex-professor and cancer patient David, played with power-shifting nuance by David Keller, may be the closest a Pipeline stage has ever had to a baddie. But even he’s a heart-breaking conundrum: a lonely old man who lavishes upon his cat all the empathy he withholds from his fellow humans, who covets the happy relationship Karl Brandt had with his son, and who, interestingly, reacts with shamed anger when Doctor Rahmiya reads his lecture notes on race hierarchy. Rather than allowing others to make them reassess their ethos, this kind of bigot instead counts those individuals as exceptions to their rule.
Doctor Rahmiya – a flawless Lydia Bakelmun – is no fragile martyr. While she gives everything of herself to her job, she doesn’t owe anyone her niceness, remaining surly and blunt to those around her. Steadfast in her duty, we see her absorb David’s morphine-addled abuse. We rage on her behalf. We watch for her to crack. Michael Workeye is a joy as Eritrean trainee nurse Daniel. His approach to David is to listen, to tolerate, to see the dying man instead of the heinous racist, and to smile. And that smile is utterly disarming.
Through its realer-than-real characters, Drip Drip Drip recharges our empathy and sets our minds on new pathways. It’s a generous, tender snapshot of the world, an ember of hope in the darkness and a well-deserved homage to our NHS.
https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2020/03/06/drip-drip-drip-at-pleasance-theatre-theatre-review/
An immigrant nurse and Muslim doctor look after a disgraced former professor who’s obsessed with Hitler’s physician Karl Brandt: it might seem a binary concept, one that requires no further examination. But – as they’ve proved reliable in doing – Pipeline present their world with such naked humanity and such forensic care that they unpeel the outer layers and reveal the blueprint at the heart. While the subject matter is political, the play is human above all things, a presentation of these very specific characters, a “who” and a “why” rather than a neat answer.
Jon Welch’s expertly crafted script dispenses small insights and the cast of five crescendos it into something sublime. Ex-professor and cancer patient David, played with power-shifting nuance by David Keller, may be the closest a Pipeline stage has ever had to a baddie. But even he’s a heart-breaking conundrum: a lonely old man who lavishes upon his cat all the empathy he withholds from his fellow humans, who covets the happy relationship Karl Brandt had with his son, and who, interestingly, reacts with shamed anger when Doctor Rahmiya reads his lecture notes on race hierarchy. Rather than allowing others to make them reassess their ethos, this kind of bigot instead counts those individuals as exceptions to their rule.
Doctor Rahmiya – a flawless Lydia Bakelmun – is no fragile martyr. While she gives everything of herself to her job, she doesn’t owe anyone her niceness, remaining surly and blunt to those around her. Steadfast in her duty, we see her absorb David’s morphine-addled abuse. We rage on her behalf. We watch for her to crack. Michael Workeye is a joy as Eritrean trainee nurse Daniel. His approach to David is to listen, to tolerate, to see the dying man instead of the heinous racist, and to smile. And that smile is utterly disarming.
Through its realer-than-real characters, Drip Drip Drip recharges our empathy and sets our minds on new pathways. It’s a generous, tender snapshot of the world, an ember of hope in the darkness and a well-deserved homage to our NHS.
https://www.theupcoming.co.uk/2020/03/06/drip-drip-drip-at-pleasance-theatre-theatre-review/
Upper Circle
****
Emma Grimsley
Drip Drip Drip deals with the issues of immigration and racism and how they affect the NHS. The play brings together three different experiences. It describes the journey of two brothers from Eritrea seeking asylum, one of whom reaches the UK and starts to train in the NHS; a Muslim doctor born in London; and their patient, a disgraced former academic who was stripped of his titles for his racist views. The use of a hospital for the setting of this production means that the personal and the political are completely entwined, and shows how deeply these issues become ingrained in all aspects of life.
This production, written by Jon Welch, cleverly avoids any stereotypes, and has clearly been written with great awareness of the subject. One of the best examples of this thoughtfulness is not even in the play itself. On the back of the programme, the writer explains the nationality and background of the two brothers, making sure to maintain the historical, factual foundations of the production while also making use of the language shared by the two actors. This detail shows the care that as been taken to make this production as realistic and faithful to real life as possible. The production uses the different experiences of the characters in a variety of ways, breaking away from the stereotypical characterisations. Daniel, who just completed a difficult journey from Eritrea to work in the UK, is shown as upbeat and optimistic, joyfully learning as much English as he can and making the most of new cultural experiences. On the other hand Rahmiya, who has a more secure living situation as an oncologist, suffers more with casual racism, as well as with sexism.
The production is staged in a way that allows these different stories to be told simultaneously, directly contrasting David’s illness in the hospital with the struggles of Daniel’s brother left behind in France. The use of a hospital bed and what looks like a supermarket stocking trolley allows for versatility, and the performance makes use of these props with lighting and sound as well as being structures for the actors to use, they form some key part of every scene. The audiovisual elements are used sparingly but effectively, to subtitle the Amharic spoken by Daniel and his brother, as well as adding effects to certain scenes. The lighting and sound does not overwhelm the more mundane, daily life of the hospital, but adds depth to the more dramatic scenes and historical weight where necessary.
Despite the serious issues that are dealt with, Drip Drip Drip still manages to be funny. It provides a commentary on the more bureaucratic and day-to-day elements of the NHS, as well as on British society today. The audience can’t help but be charmed by Michael Workeye’s boundless enthusiasm, and everyone can relate to the dry exchanges between Lydia Bakelmun and Alan Munden, perfectly illustrating modern working life. David Keller simultaneously provokes sympathy, anger and shame in the audience in his role as David, portraying a character that most people will have encountered in some form or another. This play is painfully relevant, hitting very close to home after recent political developments. Welch is not shy in his criticism of NHS cuts, or in exploring the human costs of political decisions. This show calls preconceived ideas into question and it is entertaining while still challenging how we think.
https://www.upper-circle.com/home/review-drip-drip-drip-the-pleasance
This production, written by Jon Welch, cleverly avoids any stereotypes, and has clearly been written with great awareness of the subject. One of the best examples of this thoughtfulness is not even in the play itself. On the back of the programme, the writer explains the nationality and background of the two brothers, making sure to maintain the historical, factual foundations of the production while also making use of the language shared by the two actors. This detail shows the care that as been taken to make this production as realistic and faithful to real life as possible. The production uses the different experiences of the characters in a variety of ways, breaking away from the stereotypical characterisations. Daniel, who just completed a difficult journey from Eritrea to work in the UK, is shown as upbeat and optimistic, joyfully learning as much English as he can and making the most of new cultural experiences. On the other hand Rahmiya, who has a more secure living situation as an oncologist, suffers more with casual racism, as well as with sexism.
The production is staged in a way that allows these different stories to be told simultaneously, directly contrasting David’s illness in the hospital with the struggles of Daniel’s brother left behind in France. The use of a hospital bed and what looks like a supermarket stocking trolley allows for versatility, and the performance makes use of these props with lighting and sound as well as being structures for the actors to use, they form some key part of every scene. The audiovisual elements are used sparingly but effectively, to subtitle the Amharic spoken by Daniel and his brother, as well as adding effects to certain scenes. The lighting and sound does not overwhelm the more mundane, daily life of the hospital, but adds depth to the more dramatic scenes and historical weight where necessary.
Despite the serious issues that are dealt with, Drip Drip Drip still manages to be funny. It provides a commentary on the more bureaucratic and day-to-day elements of the NHS, as well as on British society today. The audience can’t help but be charmed by Michael Workeye’s boundless enthusiasm, and everyone can relate to the dry exchanges between Lydia Bakelmun and Alan Munden, perfectly illustrating modern working life. David Keller simultaneously provokes sympathy, anger and shame in the audience in his role as David, portraying a character that most people will have encountered in some form or another. This play is painfully relevant, hitting very close to home after recent political developments. Welch is not shy in his criticism of NHS cuts, or in exploring the human costs of political decisions. This show calls preconceived ideas into question and it is entertaining while still challenging how we think.
https://www.upper-circle.com/home/review-drip-drip-drip-the-pleasance