Dr Semmelweis – Harold Pinter Theatre, London

A new play about an unjustly obscure figure from history, Dr Semmelweis combines innovative staging with solid performances.

Too Much Of A Good Thing?

I hate to say this: I may be Mark Rylance-d out… For years Rylance has been an actor I would go to see in any production (with one exception – my dislike of plays by Harold Pinter outweighs my enthusiasm for Mark Rylance). I adored Jerusalem when I originally saw it and when he reprised the role last year. I’ve seen him in new plays, old plays, and proper Shakespeare at the Globe. Basically anything. I find he has the ability to hold an audience in the palm of his hand, to connect utterly with any character.

But he does have a type. And his Dr Semmelweis, in this new play by Stephen Brown (Rylance also receives a writing credit), is too close to it for me to find anything new in his performance. If you’ve seen Rylance on stage before, chances are he played the character as fast-talking, maybe stammering. There’s a certain naivety to a lot of his characters, although he will get a laugh out of every knowing meta-theatrical moment in the script. Thus it is with his Hungarian doctor. Is it a good performance? Certainly. Did it feel familiar? Yes.

This is undoubtedly the most first world of first world problems: I’ve seen an exceptional actor too many times and now I expect more of him. The friends I saw Dr Semmelweis with, who also saw Rylance in Nice Fish with me some years ago (in this same theatre, no less), agreed. But enough petulant complaining, let’s put that aside and consider the play itself.

Dr Semmelweis

Dr Ignaz Semmelweis is a name which should be much better known than it is. He is a critical piece in the puzzle which led us to understand germ theory and greatly reduce medical death rates as a result. Born in 1818, he was a Hungarian subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a young doctor, he was appointed Assistant to Professor Johann Klein of the obstetric unit of Vienna General Hospital. The hospital was a teaching hospital with modern ideas, including training medical students in pathology by giving them hands-on autopsy experience (the script reminds us that ‘autopsy’ means ‘to see for yourself‘).

In a world before germs were understood, when fresh air was felt to be more important in disease prevention than hand-washing, you can probably guess the result. The play follows Semmelweis’s methodical and determined attempt to understand why the death rate was higher in the hospital’s doctor-led ward than the one staffed by midwives. Or rather, it follows a series of flashbacks as Semmelweis, now back in Hungary, recalls how his experiments and ideas were received. Now head of his own obstetrics unit with an admirably low death rate from puerperal fever, he is nonetheless haunted by the women he couldn’t save due to his failure to convince the medical establishment.

In a stroke of genius, these women are made manifest on stage. The production includes four musicians and half a dozen or so dancers. They exist only to Semmelweis, a sort of physical Greek chorus and constant reminder of the stakes and the doctor’s burden. It’s a very unique take on staging, and for theatre geeks is worth seeing for this alone. One or two of the dancers play minor speaking roles, but generally their function is interpretive. Having a string quartet play live on stage similarly adds a pathos that a classic theatrical soundscape may not achieve.

The Tragedy Of Intransigence

The character of Dr Semmelweis reminds me of other tragic or unsuccessful theatrical heroes. Shades of Benjamin Lay, perhaps, who bothered everyone so much about slavery he was kicked out of the West Indies. Or another doctor I saw last year, who would not compromise on her beliefs and paid the price. Ignaz Semmelweis’s greatest flaw was that, having made a discovery by chance and without the scientific proof to back it up, he could not play the political game to get others on board. If this dramatisation is anything to go by, it simply was not in his nature. Our Semmelweis is uncompromising, and truthful to a fault. Not the type of person who can change hearts and minds on outcomes alone.

Semmelweis was not alone on this journey, however, and neither is Rylance alone on stage. There are very good performances from a range of secondary characters. I particularly liked Jude Owusu as Jakob Kolletshcka, and Pauline McLynn as Anna Müller. Both feature in a particularly delightful ‘play within a play’ scene which again shows a creative eye for staging. The scene also foreshadows Semmelweis’s end, which I won’t spoil in case you go to see the play but can be found in the Wikipedia page I linked earlier.

In a way, Semmelweis’s character also reminds me of modern whistleblowers. People like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, for whom truth is beyond compromise. And for whom their actions (without getting into the whole Assange saga) created personal hardships. So definitely a recognisable character, and also a believable reception by the hospital and medical establishment.

Final Thoughts

There is a lot to like about this production. The inclusion of the musicians and dancers is a wonderful addition. It’s for innovative ideas like this that I continue to go to the theatre. And frankly it’s something only the bigger production companies (in this case Sonia Friedman) can afford. So definitely worth a West End outing.

The acting, for all my initial complaining, is also very good. Rylance captures Semmelweis’s arc from the excitement of discovery to retreat from the world with aplomb. Amanda Wilkin is excellent as his wife, sympathetic yet ultimately decisive when the situation demands it. The set design, by Ti Green, evokes a number of 19th Century spaces at once. There’s the Semmelweis’s home in Pest, the Vienna General Hospital, and its galleried autopsy theatre. It creates a three-dimensional usage of the stage which plays to the strengths of the dancers and actors.

Dr Semmelweis began, as a project, before the pandemic. Subsequent events obviously make it even more relevant. And Rylance’s own views on modern medical theories make this choice of subject a little curious. Or maybe not. The point is that a play on how hard it can be to convince people to change their minds in the face of evidence is timely. Perhaps this historic example will help us to understand similar dynamics in our own time. And if nothing else, hopefully it helps to make the name Ignaz Semmelweis a little better known outside his native Hungary.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

Dr Semmelweis on until 7 October 2023