The first play written by a woman to be staged at the Globe in either
its modern or original incarnations is about the big picture rather
than the narrative arc. Certainly, there are a number of plotlines, and
the good end happily and the bad unhappily (that is, as Oscar Wilde
wrote, what Fiction means), but Nell Leyshon is interested in showing
us a period, an attitude, rather than a particular character’s journey.
Her Bedlam is a fictionalised version of the real Bethlehem (Bethlem)
Hospital for the insane as it was in mid-18th century London: managed
on dynastic principles (four successive generations of the same family
ran Bethlem at this time), subjecting patients to bleeding, blistering
and purges seemingly at random, simply to be trying
something to cure their
brain-sickness. Above all the sense of duty to the inmates is here
eclipsed by that to the visitors who pay to gawk at and even taunt and
otherwise abuse them.
As with any such play, most of the characters are types. We see the
good doctor (visiting), the bad doctor (in charge: Jason Baughan takes
the acting laurel of the evening) and the stupid doctor (the bad one’s
son). They minister to the inmate who should have been discharged, the
others who would respond to sympathy and calm rather than leeches and
prodding, and the gentle-giant comic relief (Sean Kearns in fine form).
Outside the gates are the genteel visitor who sees the error of her
ways and begins to help, and the one who is all self-regard and cares
nothing for the inmates, even though one is the mother of his child
(Sam Crane, not physically airy-fairy enough to portray his
self-absorbed poet convincingly, and not to be confused with the
artistically impassioned inmate, Danny Lee Wynter). Coming and going
between the worlds are the Rubenesque gin-seller (Ella Smith, who
drives most of the cast/audience dynamic as well as much of the action)
and a bunch of Bedlamites who sing a clutch of period songs ranging
from a too-Englishified version of “Seven Drunken Nights” to “Oyster
Nan”, which Leyshon rightly describes as “unbelievably filthy”. Jessica
Swale’s bouncy production for the most part staves off worries that, in
a way, we are doing little different from those 18th-century visitors
in laughing at mental illness.