This Might Not Be It (Bush Theatre, London)
Verdict: Could be it
Thanks to this week's depressing news of a deepening crisis in children's mental health care provision, Sophia Chetin-Leuner's new play, This Might Not Be It, is regrettably timely.
It is, however, also a sweetly hopeful, broom cupboard-sized drama set on the other side of the Perspex partition in a children and adolescent outpatient department.
The action hinges on Angela and Jay, a double act of an old-lag receptionist and a young idealist.
Angela runs her own bespoke filing system under the mantra of 'refer, refer, refer'.
Jay is a trainee therapist who is determined to digitise the folders scattered all over the office floor.
This Might Not Be It production photos taken on the 30th January 2024 taken at the Theatre Bush, London
The action hinges on Angela and Jay, a double act of an old-lag receptionist and a young idealist
Both answer to unseen Gary — the NHS's answer to Samuel Beckett's Godot, handing down rulings from the 4th Floor.
Chetin-Leuner exhibits a talent for tautology with lines like Jay's 'you don't know stuff until you know stuff'.
But she also suggests how the dysfunctional NHS does somehow still manage to function — and how staff can connect with patients despite crushing bureaucracy and the temptation to despair.
This could be more fully explored in a longer play but, like the writing, Ed Madden's production is a hyper-realist distillation of a dog-eared hospital office.
There are neat turns from Debra Baker's officious yet warm-hearted Angela, Denzel Baidoo's naive and bashful Jay, plus Dolly Webb as an all too familiar, vulnerable teenage girl.
