BAD BLOOD BLUES To 9 May.

London.

BAD BLOOD BLUES
by Paul Sirett.

Theatre Royal Stratford East To 9 May 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 9 May 3pm.
Runs 1hr 15min No interval.

TICKETS: 020 8534 0310.
www.stratfordeast.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 April.

Scientific detachment gets a shock.
It’s framed by a lecture, reporting an experiment in Africa testing a new treatment to prevent HIV-positive mothers passing infection to their babies. Yet Clare, who delivers it, is a researcher with statistical, rather than medical, expertise.

What matters is the 99.8% of the play between the lecture-room bookends. It’s here, in 1997, that Clare’s conducting research, when young French-speaking local Patrice asks if she can help him improve his English.

Or so he says. A lot of what he tells her turns out unreliable, part of a stratagem linked to Clare’s research. In the course of their meetings questions of scientific process and moral responsibility arise (Paul Sirett wrote the piece for a TheatreScience season at Plymouth’s Theatre Royal).

There are political matters: is the West exporting research that depends on some people dying to other parts of the world now public opinion no longer allows them at home? What’s the relationship between company profit and human need?

But the most forceful matter is the distinction between detached scientific research and personal involvement. Clare’s always been aware of disease, her right foot turned inwards from childhood illness. But her authority, kitted-out through job-status and age, seems to make her impregnable as she moves into personal involvement with the younger Patrice - until her anger when she learns his motive for seeking her out, and then horror at a new danger the relationship’s placed her in, teaches her otherwise.

Patrice lies and manipulates, but Sirett gives him a moral certainty. And when violence breaks out, it’s from a Clare taken beyond her tether, his response being purely defensive.

On film, or maybe even a large stage, this could become an issue drama clamouring for emotional intensity. But in the studio space formed by the Theatre Royal’s stage, with audience surrounding the action, Ryan Romain’s production is riveting. Romain keeps actors and action moving, while following the script’s emotional variations. Nathaniel Martello-White’s Patrice has a steadiness born of his convictions, contrasted by Martina Laird’s fusion of constantly changing thoughts, incomplete sentences and the physical business accompanying them into a dynamic, always-clear personality.

Clare: Martina Laird.
Patrice: Nathaniel Martello-White.
Offstage Voice: Stella Odunlami.

Director: Ryan Romain.
Fight director: Bret Yount.
Assistant director: Stella Odunlami.

2009-04-27 00:31:39