Heart-Sink - greenroom - 29/01/08 by Julia Taylor

You can tell that Mike Woodhead , who wrote HEART-SINK the black comedy about the NHS, for Flying Pig Productions who are presenting it at the Green Room until Friday, February 1st, has inside knowledge. After all, he worked for the organisation for 20 years during which time he formed a love/hate relationship with it.

His characters display his lazer-like observations of patients and he, himself, as Doctor Peel illustrates that knowledge of human nature is just as important to a GP as medical training.

Whilst dealing with as diverse a group of patients as you could imagine, he is also pestered on the answerphone by his wife about their daughter’s birthday party taking place that day.

I suppose anyone would be exhausted after dealing with a couple of religious nuts who think their forthcoming baby is the work of God, an odd character who has been watched by ‘they’ for two years, six months and four days, an exotic dancer, a battered wife and an advanced case of Erotomania (I’ll let you work that one out).

Although slightly flushed and harassed and overshadowed by the reputation of the doctor who was his predecessor, Mike plays the role with aplomb and coolness.

The pivotal character in this play – and the one who provides pathos among both her own and other people’s humour, is Diana Brooks’ Stella. She is a sick old lady who hasn’t booked an appointment and so gets left to the last.

Not only is she neglected by her busy doctor but her age and advanced condition, has meant that the anything but ‘nice’, National Institute for Clinical Excellence have barred her from receiving an essential drug.

Diana has obviously seen ladies like her before and she is a master at droning on about Stella’s late husband, the other people in the waiting room, etc. But Stella is a heart-sink patient. In other words, she is classed as a patient who is difficult or impossible to help.

Consequently, the play has a tragic ending which makes us think about the failures of an NHS for which financial constraints make it impossible to give a service free at the point of care to an entire population irrespective of cost leading to postcode lotteries.