Set in 1948, The Human Body is about four heroic women fighting to create the NHS despite opposition from right-wing extremists led by the ‘snob’ and ‘warmonger’ Winston Churchill. One of these heroic women is a Labour councillor, another is a physician on a bike, the third works at Westminster for a socialist MP and the fourth is a hard-working mother married to a violent drunk. What’s odd about Lucy Kirkwood’s new play is that these four women co-exist within a single figure: Dr Elcock (Keeley Hawes).

Bob Geldof was the Greta Thunberg of his day, a whingeing, sanctimonious diva

Dr Elcock is a housewife, GP, alderwoman and healthcare activist who spends her busy days cooking, cleaning, curing patients, helping her boss in parliament, handling council business and attending drinks parties with her sozzled spouse. Yet she also finds time to stalk a dashing film star, George (Jack Davenport), whom she adores for obscure reasons. George is a cowardly, charmless, brain-dead, morally vacuous narcissist who lusts after the 49-year-old Dr Elcock even though he’s fawned over by every starlet in London.

George tells the doc that he loves her, or at least the script says that he loves her, so we have to believe him. But it’s hard to tell with George because he doesn’t have a personality. Instead he just quotes poems and movie scripts. When expressing affection for Dr Elcock he can’t help insulting her. He calls her ‘sour’ and says that she’d be better off ‘barefoot and pregnant’.

Their story explicitly plagiarises Brief Encounter, including the trysts at railway stations, but this show lacks the anguished poignancy of the original. And the subplot about the formulation of the NHS is as dry as a ghost’s burp.

The production has several oddities. Every prop is painted blue, even blue lumps of coal in a blue coal-scuttle, as if to suggest that Dr Elcock’s world is steeped in the toxic hues of Conservatism.

QOSHE - As dry as a ghost’s burp: Donmar Warehouse’s The Human Body reviewed - Lloyd Evans
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As dry as a ghost’s burp: Donmar Warehouse’s The Human Body reviewed

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14.03.2024

Set in 1948, The Human Body is about four heroic women fighting to create the NHS despite opposition from right-wing extremists led by the ‘snob’ and ‘warmonger’ Winston Churchill. One of these heroic women is a Labour councillor, another is a physician on a bike, the third works at Westminster for a socialist MP and the fourth is a hard-working mother married to a violent drunk. What’s odd about Lucy Kirkwood’s new play is that these four women co-exist within a single........

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