Juliet Stevenson brings The Doctor to Brighton

The Doctor, starring Juliet Stevenson, will visit Theatre Royal Brighton from September 5 to September 10.

The Olivier Award winner plays Professor Ruth Wolfe, a senior consultant in neurological medicine who has founded an institute to research Alzheimer’s and dementia and find a cure.

However, when a recording of her refusing to allow a priest into the room of a young woman dying of sepsis goes viral her life is turned upside down.

“She’s really had to work and slog and prove herself in a world that’s sometimes hostile,” said Stevenson.

“She’s quite fierce and brooks no opposition. She doesn’t suffer fools.

“She finds negotiating the current world quite difficult and therefore she gets into trouble when this incident takes place at the beginning of the play, which then goes viral, and several different factions get hold of it and start warring over it in social media and the press.

“She becomes the focus of a huge national hate campaign, and it’s how she copes and doesn’t cope with that. There is a personal story that goes on and that threads in and out of that, so you see her at home, you see her at the hospital and then you follow this catastrophic destruction of her life and work.”

The Doctor received its world premiere at London’s Almeida Theatre in 2019 but its planned transfer to the West End was cancelled due to the pandemic in 2020.

Stevenson said she is “thrilled” that the play will reach a wider audience through its three UK tour dates and West End run, with Brighton being the play’s first venue.

She has taken the opportunity during her free time after rehearsals to explore the city more.

Juliet Stevenson outside The Theatre Royal in Brighton

“I’m really delighted that Brighton is our first touring venue, it’s not a town I know well,” she said.

“I have sometimes dipped here down briefly to do work with the lovely audio studio at Pier Productions in Brighton, but that’s been my only relationship with the town.

“So I am very excited to have just arrived and have twelve days to explore – I’ve already started wandering around when we finish work at night and I’m just loving the sea and the architecture, and these amazing, funky, interesting little lanes and corners and beautiful vistas.

“And I’ve never played at Theatre Royal Brighton before. I love notching up a new theatre to my belt! I don’t often find one these days after being around a long time.

“It’s beautiful, so beautiful – I love it front and back. This beautiful, Victorian, warm space to play in and love the backstage, sort of, ‘shabby-chic’ life and rooms, it’s really lovely.

“I’m excited, too, for the audiences here who I imagine will be very lively, hungry, engaged and responsive to this play.

“I’m very thrilled to be here and looking forward to having that conversation with Brighton audiences.”

Juliet Stevenson during rehearsals for The Doctor

Stevenson, who won a Critics’ Circle Award and was nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Doctor, has worked with director Robert Icke previously on Mary Stuart in 2016 and Hamlet in 2017.

“I felt with Rob, we are making the kind of theatre I’d longed to make for ages and he’s very dynamic and is interested in making plays for right now, which I am too,” she said.

“So, he wrote The Doctor for me to do, with him, which is lovely.”

Stevenson said the play “offers a debate” about the “fierce culture we’re currently living in” including cancel culture, identity politics, the “echo chamber” that is social media and “warring of different identity groups, the kangaroo courts set up on twitter”.

“Theatre is a place you can do that, you can look at dangerous and difficult subjects, knowing it’s just a play, but recognising the complexities we must deal with in our daily lives,” she said.

“It’s an amazing psychological study, it’s an amazing central role for a woman, and an older woman – my age!

“Women rarely get to see older women telling their experience on a stage.”