BLUE/ORANGE BY JOE PENHALL

Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall

Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall

Joe Penhall's award winning three hander is a profoundly disconcerting play. Getting its Scottish premiere from the feisty five-year-old Rapture Theatre under Michael Emans' direction, it claws a savagely sharp finger nail down the bland face of a profession we tend to view with ambivalence and wary reservation (www.culturevulture.net).

Psychiatrists, especially consultants, do not fare well here, where clinical procedures, diagnoses and decisions concerning the patient's fate are subjected to coruscating satire. Particularly so if you happen to be like Chris, who is black and in hospital with a “borderline personality disorder”. He sees orange as blue and believes his dad is Idi Amin. He is also smart, witty and eager to get out. Christopher John Hall plays him with flashes of humour in a well-observed performance that dips in and out of a disturbed psyche, leaving us with the same uncertainty that screws up his doctors. A suitable case for extended sectioning? Perhaps, but also a metaphor highlighting the serious issue of the disproportionate number of ethnic minorities crowding NHS psychiatric wards (www.culturevulture.net).

For the pompous, overbearing Dr Robert Smith, Chris is little more than an opportunistic gift to endorse his theory of ethno-centric behaviour as a step into academia. Jimmy Chisholm finds the volatile mix of cynicism and self-seeking arrogance of a man who sees himself as a demi-god. A highly charged, confrontational role, which Chisholm grasps and modulates with panache and confidence. Greg Powrie struggles with the part of the case doctor descending from professional idealism to abject humility, and never really catches the necessary conviction and determination to champion his patient and alter a flawed system.

In a London psychiatric hospital, an enigmatic patient claims to be the son of an African dictator - a story that becomes unnervingly plausible. An incendiary tale of race, madness and a Darwinian power struggle at the heart of a dying National Health Service, Blue/Orange premiered at London's Cottesloe Theatre in April 2000 and transferred to the West End in 2001 (www.culturevulture.net)."Joe Penhall creates as riveting and compelling a new chamber play as we have seen since Michael Frayn's Copenhagen" - Daily Mail "Britain's best new play since Michael Frayn's Copenhagen...thrillingly original" - Financial Times "Funny and irreverent...Penhall's writing is vibrant throughout" - Independent on Sunday "I came out of Joe Penhall's new play in a state of hot, black excitement: emotional, intellectual, moral excitement. How many plays can claim that much?" - Sunday Times "Exuberant...Penhall has the gift of making serious points in a comic manner and of conveying moral indignation without preaching...Stinging satire" - Guardian "Provocative, blackly funny...[and] taut with thought-provoking ambiguity." (www.culturevulture.net)

Though this is a short script with few characters, Penhall does a great job keeping the reader guessing. I, personally, am still trying to figure out the motivations of the characters. The entire play takes place in the office of a mental hospital (great for a black box or other small ...