FringeReview UK 2026
Do Not Attempt This Conversation
Makoto The Cat Productions
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: The Lion and Unicorn Theatre, Kentish Town
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
The conversation. Too many know it already. DNAR or DNR is the term applied by a system when a gravely ill patient is deemed not to benefit from being kept alive. Mo Maka’s Do Not Attempt This Conversation plays at the Lion and Unicorn till June 6, co-directed by Maka and A.J. Samuel, both performing. It then transfers to the Bread & Roses Theatre from 25-28 June.
Mo Maka’s play though brief is superbly constructed and taut. I can hardly wait for Maka’s next play.
Review
The conversation. Too many know it already. DNAR or DNR is the term applied by a system when a gravely ill patient is deemed not to benefit from being kept alive. “Not in the patient’s best interests.” Really? Mo Maka’s Do Not Attempt This Conversation plays at the Lion and Unicorn till June 6, co-directed by Maka and A.J. Samuel, both performing. It then transfers to the Brad & Roses Theatre from 25-28 June.
Doesn’t DNR break a few Hippocratic oaths? And what of the over-stretched doctors on late shift ushering in a grieving relative? Where do either doctor or relative seek support? Have they only got each other and how does that work when it gets personal? Add the fact it’s a former resident doctor writing and performing in this, and you get as real a sense of end-of-life and the NHS as you can bear.
Mo Maka (Dr Nneka) is an FO1. A Junior or now Resident Doctor only a few weeks out of medical school and on her first night shift. To say it’s a baptism of fire doesn’t describe it.
Dr Nneka’s on a non-personal phone, stressed with having left her mobile behind, since she’s trying to obtain proper care for her neighbour Symon. His number is on it. She’ll be receiving calls. She’s trying to secure a care package for him whilst she’s away.
Since she’s now on shift with a new DNAR. Both these challenge her. She speaks first to a woman – these are recorded voices and synching is perfectly delivered on a good sound system. This more sympathetic voice has to refer Nneka to the resident consultant. He’s not nicknamed for nothing. His bland unctuous reach of male entitlement prescribes the best way of evading humanity altogether. He’s no caricature either, but credible. Harry Vella-Thompson’s lighting and sound is impressive, not often encountered in such modest venues.
After this there’s the first of a few blackouts, as Dr Nneka ushers in Stephanie (A. J. Samuel), whose very elderly grandfather has sepsis taking hold of his chest. It’s not a simple chest infection, and sepsis as we know is usually fatal. Antibiotics have combatted this, but Nneka knows the advice, brutal as it is, is correct. It’s just the manner of it she hates.
Whist Maka’s role might seem a straight one, there’s layers of anxiety and revelation that increasingly complicate her response and investment. A. J. Samuel’s Stephanie is ferocious from the first, hostile, primed to litigate. “My boyfriend’s a second-year law student. We’ll come for you” is a promise she makes more or less in her second sentence.
Quite why Stephanie seems the family member fighting for her grandfather takes layers to explore, but Samuel’s inhabiting an implacable opposition to anything Dr Nneka suggests. Dr Nneka’s response to such implacable ad hominem assaults wears down and becomes abrasive, to the point where she admits that though Stephanie’s grieving, she can go home and forget. And face another such decision on Monday. It’s a bleak admission, not one you’d ever expect a doctor to make in life. Surely this isn’t any kind of conversation you can believe of doctor and relative. But then you remember a practising Resident doctor has written this: it’s authentic.
It’s a locked conversation too that can only go one way. And after half an hour it does. Dr Nneka’s on the point of leaving. Then there’s a check, and positions are almost entirely reversed. Samuel is particularly fine at allowing the undulating moment to register; and issue reveals of her own. Vehemence gives way to disclosure, and questions of a very different kind. Both actors ratchet and reverse tensions; and clearly as co-directors sing this in their bones.
“Him. He is worth it. Please, we’ll see.” Without reveals, this is the point where intersections of personal and impersonal care collide. And how ethics survive it, if at all. It’s a critique too of the inhumane and blunted sensibilities of those in charge who, worn down early, pass on their institutionalised, perhaps natural insensitivities to those who must take guidance from them. A system stretched way beyond breaking-point is thus also infused with protocols to abrade and compound that broken model. And if you’re reading this James Murray, Wes Streeting, Alan Milburn, Andrew Lansley, Jeremy Hunt, Alan Milburn again: there’s the swing door. Walk into it on your way out.
Brief props and costumes are minimal though as you’d expect, crisply accurate.
Maka’s play though brief is superbly constructed and taut: much happens in 57 minutes. If you think it’s going one way, wait. How Maka has combined two careers is remarkable enough. She also appears as an actor and trained at National Youth and Globe Youth Theatres; and again more recently. She and Samuel are performing this play at The Bread and Roses 25-28 June. So if you miss it here, there’s another chance. I can hardly wait for Maka’s next play.
Photo Credit: Lidia Crisafulli
www.thelionandunicorntheatre.com
www.thebreadandrosestheatre.co.uk
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