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Juliet Stevenson won the Critics Circle best actor award, and deservedly so, for her role in Robert Icke’s production first seen at the Almeida in 2019 but long delayed on its journey to the West End by the pandemic. It should be no less electrifying for the delay. It tells of a Jewish doctor, Ruth Wolff, who denies a Catholic priest entry to the room of a teenager who is dying of sepsis after a botched home abortion. Wolff believes the last rites will only distress the girl, who does not realise she is dying. But that decision brings down the wrath of the internet, with Wolff cast as a villain. This is not a show which will be to everyone’s taste. It wears its intelligence on its sleeve in way that some might find irritating, but it is an unashamedly meaty drama. One of its chief pleasures is the way you find your sympathies constantly shifting and the way it makes you interrogate your own beliefs and also your assumptions about the characters. Neatly done.
Robert Icke’s sold-out, five-star Almeida Theatre production, The Doctor, will tour the Uk before transferring to the Duke of York’s Theatre from 29 September 2022. Olivier Award winner, Juliet Stevenson, ‘delivering one of the peak performances of the theatrical year’ (The Guardian), will reprise her role as Professor Ruth Wolff. Juliet won a Critics’ Circle Award and was nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for her performance in this role. On an ordinary day, at a private hospital, a young woman fights for her life. A priest arrives to save her soul. Her doctor refuses him entry. Freely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi, The Doctor is a "provocative, wonderfully upsetting" (Independent) whirlwind of gender, race and questions about identity, "one of the peaks of the theatrical year" (Guardian), and a "devastating play for today" (Financial Times). Age Recommendation: 14+ Includes discussion of suicide and the description of suicide methods