Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Tending
El Blackwood
Genre: Drama, Political, Theatre, Verbatim Theatre
Venue: Underbelly
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Based on over 70 interviews with NHS nurses of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities, Tending is a verbatim play that tells the raw, real and unheard stories of nurses. The writer El Blackwood has expertly crafted an incredible piece, weaving in everything she heard onto an enthralling dramatic piece. Both as a writer and performer she manages to make you connect with these characters and empathise with them to a level that an article or news segment could rarely do. The play is expertly written, performed and directed, portraying an extreme, current and pressing issue as it is the state of the NHS in the UK. Tending was the most real and timely play I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 and it deserves a full room every day, the more Tending is seen the more the nurses will be heard.
Review
One tries to imagine what an NHS nurse goes through, but the reality of what I learned from Tending I could’ve never imagined. Based on over 70 interviews with NHS nurses of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities, Tending is a verbatim play that tells the raw, real and unheard stories of nurses. The play merges the stories into three characters: a palliative care nurse, a paediatric ICU nurse and an A&E nurse. Tending goes through their daily lives, the hurdles, the joys and the mundane, while also exploring the critical periods of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2022-2023 strike.
The setting is minimalist, with three chairs, a hospital wall and a fluorescent light that changes colours, accompanied by minimal sound design, which allows the audience to concentrate completely on the mesmerising writing and performance. The writer El Blackwood has expertly crafted an incredible piece, weaving in everything she heard onto an enthralling dramatic piece. The characters experience unimaginable things, what happens to them but also what they have to do. Tending is a call for help for a declining system, where patients and carers suffer equally. However, El Blackwood masterfully combines the heartbreaking events with the playful things the nurses do to unwind, the love and support they have for each other, and the kindness they show patients, highlighting the wonderful human beings they are and also adding much needed levity. The story has a strong narrative which takes you through what they thought nursing would be, what it ultimately was, and how it changed through the pandemic and the strikes.
Ben Lynn plays Nurse 1, the palliative care nurse, with effortless honesty, showing the shield necessary for that specific specialty. As well as creating the play, El Blackwood is Nurse 2, the paediatric ICU nurse which so naturally wears her heart on her sleeve and delivers some of the most heart-wrenching monologues beautifully. Mara Allen plays Nurse 3, the A&E nurse that has been in the profession the longest, expertly showing the effects of burnout and how hard it is to be a health professional for long. I talked briefly with Ell Blackwood after the play while I was purchasing the text, and she mentioned the ease in which the play is performed by the actors as they know both the lines and the situations they portray are real, allowing for no confusion when deciding what emotion to give them.
The directing is key, adding movement that dynamises a play mainly made out of verbatim monologues, with the real texts from the interviews unchanged. The characters are placed in lines and circles, with the other two often serving as listeners for the one giving the monologue. A play made out of mostly narrators and listeners could’ve become tedious but the writing and the performances are so fascinating that it’s hard to take your eyes off them. The lights and sound also help give every specific scene a different mood, though the ups and downs of nursing.
We all read the news about the state of the NHS and nurses’ strike but the emotional effect of seeing these stories portrayed on stage is a lot more powerful. El Blackwood both as a writer and performer manages to make you connect with these characters and empathise with them to a level that an article or news segment could rarely do. That is the value I see in plays like Tending, they have the opportunity to get to people in a different way and hopefully bring about change.
The play is expertly written, performed and directed, portraying an extreme, current and pressing issue as it is the state of the NHS in the UK. All people from different nationalities are bound to learn and grow by watching it. Tending was the most real and timely play I saw at the Edinburgh Fringe 2024 and it deserves a full room every day, the more Tending is seen the more the nurses will be heard.
