Doctor on the Stage
MESSRS. GORDON AND WILLIS'S feu d'esprit on medical apprenticeship puts the accent heavilY on the jeu; here are all the time-honoured prototypes of English medical fiction—the rough-hewn character porter; the moronic and the calculating nurses; the Kensington-type matron; the comically- callous surgeon. And, of course, the students: handsome lads, full of fun, fond of a joke and a pot of beer, never touch a book . . . well, not until the night before examinations.
The jokes are about operations, love-affairs (real, pretended and frustrated) and men dressing up as women; in fact, a dose of good. clean fun in the best British medical tradition. There is either some padding in Act 2, or the play needs much faster pace towards the close; the honours of laugh-getting divide about equally among Frank Thring as the surgeon, Douglas Ives as the porter, and Anthea AskeY as the more witless of the nurses.
A. V. C.
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