DOCTORS MAKE DRAMA

Working surgeons and clinical researchers under Sir Ara Darzi have been working with a theatre company to create a unique three-week event in London Bridge comprising new plays and debates for Spring 2007. Prof. Nadey Hakim, transplant surgeon extraordinaire, is also involved. More news to follow once details are confirmed ...

Nick Silver Can't Sleep

Although not without interest, I found this Radio 3 play on insomnia oddly soporific! Janice Kerbel's Nick Silver Can't Sleep is part of Artangel's Nights of London series of artist-led projects exploring the city with people who wake, work or watch over it. Kerbel developed her project in conversation with insomniacs, sleep scientists and botanists. Listen again here after 4th November.

Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka's modern classic Metamorphosis is showing at the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith until Sat 28th October.

The bizarre tale of a man who wakes up to find himself turned into a giant spider and his family's response to this comes alive beautifully on stage. Set to an original, haunting soundtrack, the 2 storey stage allows the audience to simultaneously experience the changing reactions of the family from fear and disbelief to transient kindness followed by negligence and downright ruthlessness , alongside the increasing isolation and suffering of the transformed man.

I was struck by the parallel situation of various people with chronic diseases such as cancers but also mental illness, which is heavily stigmatised because it is so poorly understood from both the clinical and public perspectives. I found the sense of betrayal by the sister was particularly poignant, in contrast to the denial and indifference exhibited by his parents.

With the exception of a few humourous interludes (I think designed to take the edge off the raw emotions felt by the audience), the play stays faithful to the story. Incredibly powerful - well worth seeing.

Review: 'The Blackwater Lightship' by Colm Toibin

It’s the early 1990s in Ireland and a young man, Declan, is in the final stages of AIDS. He has hidden his homosexuality and his illness from his family until now. His sister Helen, through whose eyes the story is told, his hard-bitten mother and his proud and obstinate grandmother will all react in different ways. Helen has never forgiven her mother for her utterly inept handling of their father’s death from cancer twenty years before, which left her feeling unloved and emotionally isolated. Now Declan wants to spend a few days in his grandmother’s house on a crumbling cliff in Cush and the family is reluctantly forced together to support him. His friends Paul and Larry are mercifully competent at dealing with the physical exigencies of illness and prepared to put up with the family’s hostility.

Colm Toibin’s writing style is deft and engaging. One cannot help but hear the Irish accent in his dialogue. ‘Oh look who it is now, look at her, look at her hair!’ shouts Granny at a panelist on the The Late Late Show. There are plenty of humorous interludes to lighten what would otherwise be a rather solemn narrative.

The decommissioned Blackwater Lightship of the title is a metaphor for the unfathomable loss of something expected to be consistently dependable – like the love of a mother or daughter.

The doctor, although she doesn't feature prominently in the story, comes off refreshingly well in this account. She is a consultant known to her patients as ‘Louise’. She’s given out her home number and is caring, worried and engaged in spite of the inevitability of Declan’s condition. Declan's friend Paul was medically literate in a way that seemed a credible and respectful reflection of the knowledge carers acquire through proximity and experience with chronic illness.

I didn’t know that this novel included an illness narrative when I plucked it off the shelf. I can recommend it as a lyrical account of family relationships in times of crisis.

'A Pervert's Guide to Cinema'

Behind the rather ambiguous title, A Pervert's Guide to Cinema is a brilliant documentary film about cinema and the psyche. The endearing and engaging Slavoj Zizek, Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher, takes us on a magical demystifying tour of how films play on notions of fantasy and reality. Zizek uses psychoanalytic concepts, but explains so clearly with apt clips from a range of films, that no one should be deterred by the theory.

The film, which I should warn you is long, is divided into three parts. Part 1 deals with the workings of the unconscious in movies. It maps the way film uses Freudian concepts to confront anxiety, and of this Hitchcock is exemplary. Part 2 looks at desire: this part is particularly persuasive about how fantasy is used to escape reality but when fantasies become real they are even more nightmarish than reality. He draws on Solaris, The Piano Teacher and David Lynch's movies to demonstrate. Part 3 is about illusion. We know film is an illusion but why do we still find it so convincing? Zizek shows how even when we know what will happen, we still are drawn in by the subjective experience of spectatorship.

What makes this film so much more than a lecture, is that Zizek travels to locations and interperlates himself into the sets of the movies he discusses. Zizek's style is witty and frank, and his emotional intesity on screen makes him as good a performer as any RADA-schooled actor. Probably predictably, he draws mainly from the horror genre which lend themselves most readily to Freudian/Lacanian concepts of subjecthood, but the array of films referred to is wide: The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, Blue Velvet, The Tramp, to name but a few

Fascinating, enlightening and enjoyable -- everyone interested in film and representation should see this movie. I recommend seeing it in the cinema as the clips have much more presence than on TV. But if you can't make it to the ICA before 2 November and you're interested in the ideas, an edited transcription is here.

StudentBMJ is well worth a look

Regular contributors AJ and Taz have an article called 'The Detox Diaries' in this month's StudentBMJ. It's about their experiences of trying a detox diet, and is informative and funny. AJ and Taz are both away on placement at the moment, but have promised to blog their experiences when they are back in Blogger contact.

In the same issue is an article by James Thomas from Leeds on the value of creative writing and poetry to medical education. Hear, hear!

Test Site 2006

Not so much a coathanger round an old sock as a rat down a drainpipe! Sorry, I know it's not exactly relevant to medical humanities but Tz's last post and The Guardian's piece on this new work in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall just seemed to coincide - serendipity or what? It's Test Site, Carsten Holler's latest at Tate Modern. Apparently you reach speeds of 30mph as you descend. God only knows what that does to you. I feel a PCC outing coming on!