Blue/Orange at the Young Vic review: This 16 year old snapshot of a malfunctioning NHS still feels all too relevant
Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange was first performed at the National Theatre way back in 2000, roughly four hundred years ago now, but its depiction of an inter-bickering and resource-deprived NHS remains painfully relevant. Today it’s about pay. Back then it was all about beds. How many we’ve got, how many we need, and how many sick people we can tip out of them before anybody notices.
Hugely clever staging at the Young Vic leads the arriving audience through winding corridors and a bleach-scented consultation room before finding their seats around the central stage, on which senior consultant Robert (David Haig) and junior doctor Bruce (Luke Norris) argue over whether or not to discharge psychiatric patient Christopher (Daniel Kaluuya), who believes oranges are blue and that Idi Amin is his dad.
Eager to clear a bed, Robert reckons the delusion is a matter of race and “cultural specificity” and that Christopher should be unceremoniously catapulted out of the system to be among “his people”. His cavalier attitude clashes with the idealistic views of the younger Bruce in broadly Kafka-esque scenes, as the schizophrenic patient becomes a football booted back and forth by the warring medics.
Haig is a subtle authoritative menace throughout, and Norris gives the play its aggressively socialist bite, but it’s Kaluuya who impresses most, playing Chris with a charismatic, muddled and comic edge. Blue/Orange’s snapshot of an NHS at odds with itself might be 16 years old, but the players are all the same and the grim story anything but outdated.
The Young Vic | ★★★★☆