Showing @ Citizens Theatre, Glasgow until Sat 09 Mar
Originally a 1994 BBC Scotland television series, Donna Franceschild rejuvenates her script to allow for the technological advances of society. However although nearly two decades old, the issues about mental illness are still as pertinent as they were in the 90s. To escape his window salesman day-job, Eddie McKenna (Iain Robertson) takes a job reviving the old radio station at St Jude’s Hospital for the mentally ill. As the patients, particularly Campbell (Brian Vernel) take an interest, the closer he becomes to the eccentric collection, forming personal relationships with people often banished to the fringes of society.
Franceschild’s light-hearted and jovial approach to a subject that holds an uncomfortable, almost taboo, place in society portrays the highs and lows of each condition. She finds a balance, making light of the funnier symptoms (excessive cleaning, over enthusiasm) but also conveying the serious and negative impacts too. What Franceschild’s script illustrates well is, although each illness is categorised under an umbrella term, (Bipolar, OCD) through each back-story, we see the individual nature of their conditions. Eddie, an outsider to the hospital but the most compassionate of the non-patient characters, is in the minority in his interest and consideration of each invalid. While Stuart (the authoritative and abrasive nursing assistant) represents the commonplace attitude, dismissive and suspicious of mental health issues, a reflection of how mental illness is frequently disregarded in our culture.
Director Mark Thomson’s constant use of 60s soul music by black musicians links the stigmatisation of the mentally ill to that of the black power movement, emphasised by Campbell’s reworking of Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech. By showing the similarities between these two struggles, Franceschild is saying that the discriminatory prejudices of racism are just as relevant to the maltreatment of the mentally ill. Rather than painting an “Us and Them” picture, Franceschild blurs the line between mentally ill, (the ingenious Fergus) and “sane” (the psychotic children) to show that despite the labels given to us, ultimately we are all people.
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