Nursing, when it’s good is love. It’s loving strangers.
Tending is a beautifully constructed verbatim play that explores the inner lives of National Health Service workers in the UK. Created from over 70 interviews with nurses, it examines the debilitating pressure of COVID, grief, love, burnout and the hysteria/hilarity of those working in the nursing profession.
Curated and written by El Blackwood, directed by John Livesey and starring El Blackwood, Ben Lynn and Mara Allen, this is a moving and thought-provoking play and a call to action for reform to the UK’s healthcare system.
Livesey has coaxed beautiful, authentic performances from his actors that are emotionally resonant, and brimming with humanity and authenticity. Blackwood has distilled the content of her interviews down to the essence of life as a nurse with the NHS and homed in on the universal issues that face most nurses today – the reward of helping people heal, the depth of human connection when working with the vulnerable, the grief of loss and the devastation that accompanies burnout. She also takes a humorous look at poo, bad smells and the cold weather, and a not-so-humorous look at palliative care, the death of children and how to support their parents.
Most importantly, Tending shines a damning light on the lack of support for nurses during COVID. One nurse tells of a politician who was filmed visiting a hospital to make him look good, but didn’t bother talking to any of the nurses about how they were faring. Another nurse speaks of patients who’ve been sleeping in beds in the corridors for weeks, but when another prominent politician develops COVID, he’s ushered straight in to the best care available. Another nurse says, ‘20% of our work is caring and 80% is paperwork. It should be the other way around.’ And another says, ‘[The NHS] is all about money and budgets when it should be about human beings.’
The descriptions of burnout are harrowing and heartbreaking. It’s devastating to witness the shame, desperation and sense of failure these brave soldiers on the frontline experience when they finally have to throw their arms in the air and admit defeat. And the details of the inhumane conditions in which they work – the long hours, lack of breaks, mind-numbing exhaustion and lack of support – are shocking and infuriating. This should not be happening to our most valuable workers in this day and age.
Read: Festival reviews: YOAH, Apricity, Afrique en Cirque, Ten Thousand Hours, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Tending is an unflinching, immensely moving play that provides a staggering breadth of insight and inspires a combination of outrage and compassion in its audience. Each moment is infused with meaning, and it’s clearly created by a team who care deeply about their subject. It’s the kind of play that needs to be studied in every school and seen by every politician in the UK. Go see it. Because nurses matter.
Tending will be performed until 25 August at Underbelly Cowgate.
