Doctor Death

‘European premiere of classic American musical’ is a phrase that deeply alarms the experienced playgoer. As I tootled along to Southwark Playhouse I asked myself why this Rodgers and Hammerstein masterpiece had taken so long to plough its way across the ocean. In 1947 the Broadway prodigies decided to follow up their first two hits, Oklahoma! and Carousel, with a brand new storyline drawn entirely from their imaginations. The plan was to extoll the life of the ordinary Midwest Joe and they created a figure (Joe Jr, after his dad), living in a backwater in the early years of the 20th century.

The script doggedly stalks Joe Jr through every phase of his morally exemplary and supremely tedious existence. He’s born, he endures the ordeals of infancy, he graduates to adolescence, he wins a college place, he follows his father into the medical profession, and he marries a mincing nobody in a skirt.