SICK SICK SICK

Spend an hour with a clown doctor and find your troubles washed away

Article by Gareth K Vile | 12 Apr 2010

Perhaps the main difference between "performance" and "theatre" is that noticing the skill of a performer is a distraction in a script, but often the focus of other forms. For SICK, the understated brilliance of clown Suzie Ferguson takes director Martin Danziger's dark inspiration – a spell in hospital diagnosed with cancer – and charmingly pokes at the hidden life of the patient.

The match of clown to illness is a perfect synthesis of form and content. Ferguson's red nose and precise movement become an illuminating filter for the absurdity and boredom of a day in bed, surrounded by medical apparatus. Struggling against ill-health and tedium, she dances with her drip stand, gets lost in fantasies of love and death, rages against the deadening routine of check-up, meal and waiting, before confronting her own mortality.

Ferguson finds meaning in the slightest nuance of gesture. Never over-playing the physical comedy, even her imagined death and annunciation are hilarious. The deeper observations of the alienation inherent in hospitalisation, and the inevitable paranoia caused by illness, retain the humour. As Danziger hoped, the clown becomes an eloquent mediator between the patient and the audience, embodying the frailty of the sick.

In just under an hour, SICK leads the audience through a variety of moods, smiling wryly at human fears and hopes, never losing compassion. Apart from representing physical discomfort, this almost wordless play rehabilitates the clown as an important presence in Scottish theatre, rescuing her from the twilight world of big top terrors and children's party bullies.

Sick Tron Theatre

Run Ended

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