Review: Dr Semmelweis, Bristol Old Vic – ‘A mesmerising accomplishment’

The opening scene of Dr Semmelweis presents an idea that is deeply woven through the fabric of the story. “There once was a man who discovered something,” we learn. “Something no one else could see.”

Overlooked and ostracised during his professional life as a doctor working in Vienna in the 19th century, Dr Ignaz Semmelweis was in fact, a revolutionary – whose discoveries in medical hygiene lay dormant for 40 years after his death, and then went on to change the course of modern medical practice.

In writing his director’s note for the production, Tom Morris invites us to think about what makes a radical: “Why are so many brilliant people outsiders? What combination of vanity and empathy drives the pioneers in medicine or indeed any field? What kind of mind can make the leaps of thought necessary to overturn injustice in the foundations of society?”

Perhaps the emotional weight of the narrative lies in the fact that these questions were as pertinent then as they are today.

Then, as now, the long shadow of a pandemic falls over the story, and the role of society in helping to elevate and take seriously what Semmelweis’ wife Maria (powerfully played by Thalissa Teixeira) calls “the voices unheard” – is forcefully underscored.

Mark Rylance in Dr Semmelweis – photo: Geraint Lewis

The production stars Mark Rylance, multiple award winner, former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe on the banks of the Thames and undoubtedly amongst the theatrical titans of our age.

He first envisioned the play back in 2016, and co-wrote it with Stephen Brown, giving him a deep affiliation for the story that is ingrained on his face throughout his performance.

Rylance’s presence is utterly magnetic, and the connection he holds with the audience is electrifying – truly like nothing I have ever experienced as a theatre goer.

Rylance recently called theatre “a thousand times more enjoyable” than film, and for the actor and audience alike, the intimacy of a packed Bristol Old Vic auditorium feels extraordinary.

The entire cast, too, are astonishing. Jackie Clune impresses as nurse Anna Muller; Felix Hayes and Sandy Grierson are commanding and memorable as fellow doctors Ferdinand von Hebra and Jakob Kolletschka; Clemmie Sveaas integrates dance and acting as the ill-fated mother, Lisa Elstein – but the performances are universally strong.

It’s hard to quantify what Dr Semmelweis is – it’s not just a play, but rather a seamless and extraordinary integration of acting, dance, music and design that seems as radical as the man, and the mind, that is front and centre of it all.

Mark Rylance, Thalissa Teixeira and The Mothers – photo: Geraint Lewis

Special mention must go to the dancers, who are a constant presence within the narrative – shapeshifting from living women of the wards, to ghostly visions of those who died of ‘childbed fever’.

Antonia Franceschi’s choreography is characterised by its exhalations of breath and sudden changes in style – from lyrical ballet, to angular contemporary, and then periods of Lea Anderson-like gestural movement, representing the clinical nature of handwashing. They are at once visible, and invisible – a living embodiment of the silent voices of women in a man’s world.

The stage itself, which revolves, abounds with performers. We see doctors going back and forth through a doorway between autopsy rooms and delivery wards (without washing their hands); births and deaths occurring instantaneously, and the to-ing and fro-ing of Semmelweis’ interrogations of the truth, as he fights not only the constraints of the medical establishment, but the intensifying turbulence within his own mind.

As the ghosts of the dead mothers surround him with increasing momentum, Semmelweis is encircled by them and unable to temper his rage at the medical world closing ranks rather than to admit they were, in Rylance’s words, “unconscious killers” of the thousands of women dying needlessly in childbirth.

Ti Green’s design is appropriately dark, industrial and austere; it conjures up lofty dissection halls and unforgiving hospital buildings in which people are treated as bodies, not individuals.

It features a rounded balcony and an oculus suspended above, through which streams of light occasionally puncture the darkness – representing both the single-mindedness of Semmelweis, and what Green describes as “the self-absorption that made it so hard for him to tolerate other voices in the conversation – his brilliance and his weakness being different sides of the same coin”.

Mark Rylance first had the idea for Dr Semmelweis in 2016 – photo: Geraint Lewis

In the second half, as the mothers judder and shake and Adrian Sutton’s music becomes more staccato and jarring, Semmelweis finally loses his grip on reality and the temporal world, failing to recognise his wife and child at points.

He stalks about in the inky darkness at the back of the stage (used to its full depth), and we are given a representation of a man besieged by mental turmoil, literally surrounded by his thoughts.

A recurring motif sees hands reaching towards the sky for a final time at the end of the play. Does Maria close her first at the end, or did I imagine it? Either way, the echoes of the BLM movement seem tangible, and a timely indication of the ever-present need to fight for societal progress.

As the applause reverberates around the Old Vic, this is an audience well aware we have all shared in something special. Dr Semmelweis is a mesmerising production that will stay with you long after the curtain falls.

Dr Semmelweis is at Bristol Old Vic until February 12. For tickets and more information, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/dr-semmelweis

Main photo: Geraint Lewis

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