AN IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION. To 1 December.
London
AN IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION
by Carl Djerassi
Bridewell Theatre To 1 December 2002
Tue-Sun 7.30pm Mat Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS 020 7936 3456
Review Timothy Ramsden 17 November
Bringing science and its ethics to the stage is valuable, but there's more to a good play than subject matter.Chemist, novelist and playwright Carl Djerassi bestrides the Art/Science divide, though based on this play you could ask what's meant by 'Art'. With An Immaculate Misconception, the form is there: it is a play. But how good is it?
In taking us through the processes involved in ICSI (an acronym - don't ask) as a means of fertilising a woman's egg through injecting just one sperm - instead of the several millions normally required – the piece is an effective illustrated lecture/demonstration. It glances, too, at ethical dilemmas. At 37 Melanie Laidlaw wants a child. Alas, the partner she wants is infertile. Having made off from bed carrying a condom, she seeks to inject her egg with a struggling sperm; a process we see on video.
Enlisting a distinguished medic to work alongside her – and inside, as he'll be inserting the hopefully fertilised egg – gives rise to his ethical shock that she's experimenting on herself and his substitution of his own, more active, sperm for the original, unwitting donor's. Two eggs are implanted, with the two men's sperm. One takes hold: but which? And who's daddy to the lad that results?
Better a play about such dilemmas than yet more from the affluent divorce-and-disgust school or the youth-as-yob brigade, you might say. But, however fertile his material, Djerassi's construction is awkward, depending on a series of coincidental comings and goings and on characters making leaps of realisation that are more dramatically convenient than psychologically convincing. Too often, also, things are spelled out over-explicitly.
The script tends to isolate crises, bending characters to issues. Andy Jordan's strong cast did not, I suspect, have overmuch rehearsal time. Experienced as they are, they substitute histrionic flings for character traits. Everything's at near-boiling pitch, with little sense of complex reactions. These aren't in the script, and Terence Wilton particularly does a fine job of covering his fact-padding speeches with a sense of energetic personal involvement by his character.
I enjoyed learning about the science and considering the ethics, but I endured the thin-ice dramatic writing. And, since you do ask, the process is Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection
Adam: Frankie Carson
Dr Melanie Laidlaw: Denise Stephenson
Menachem Dvir: Paul Moriarty
Dr Felix Frankenthaler: Terence Wilton
Director: Andy Jordan
Designer: Joanna Parker
Lighting: Chris Corner
Sound: Paul Bull
Video: Nic Sandiland
Composer: Iain Dunnet
2002-11-18 08:58:14