The Doctor’s Dilemma
Consider his 1906 foray into medical ethics, The Doctor’s Dilemma. Its opening passages put as many as six doctors in a room, where they discuss the latest fashions in treatment. The newly knighted Sir Colenso Ridgeon is a serious researcher whose latest breakthrough helps antibodies combat the bacillus that causes tuberculosis. Ridgeon’s pal, Cutler Walpole, performs fad surgeries for the carriage trade, excising a fictitious organ called the nuciform sac. A poverty-stricken young clinician named Dr. Blenkinsop swears by greengage plums, while his social better, Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington, insists on “stimulating the phagocytes” at all costs. The elder statesman of the group, old Sir Patrick Cullen, sits by and growls that it’s all been done before. (The sixth doctor, Schutzmacher–a Jew who made his fortune guaranteeing cures–has, interestingly, been cut from this production.)
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Speaking of life, some critics rejected the lively, cartoonish excess of Goodman Theatre’s currently running Heartbreak House, saying it obscures Shaw’s language in an attempt to cater to America’s cultural ADD. Personally, I think the Goodman show does a great service, reminding us that–bouts of logorrhea not withstanding–Shaw was a vigorously popular playwright with a sharp sense of the silly. Michael Halberstam’s Doctor’s Dilemma for Writer’s Theatre is more modest, more respectful, more decorously beautiful, a little duller, and therefore more likely to please the linguists. Still, it has its considerable pleasures–like Bradley Mott, playing Sir Ralph as Polonius, and Robert Scogin, harrumphing wisely as old Sir Patrick. Janet Ulrich Brooks is also entertaining, playing way over her years as Ridgeon’s housekeeper. Jonathan Weir’s Walpole has a great Queer Eye quality, all lit up as he is by the wonder of his own being. Best of all, Scott Parkinson takes Louis from plaintive childishness to a sybaritism so powerful you’d swear you can see horns, hooves, and a panpipe–and then on to an affecting, fey dignity.
