Edward’s Boys review for The Stratfordian: ‘Trust Me, I’m a Doctor!’

Is there anything Edward’s Boys can’t do? They are garlanded with praise by academics, who are delighted how Edward’s Boys shine new light on rarely performed plays, and a little-known period of theatre. Audiences adore them. On their recent trip to take part in one of France’s major international festivals, the Printemps des Comédiens in Montpellier, the Boys performed in the oldest anatomy theatre in Europe, did workshops for high-school students in collaboration with the French Culture Ministry, and were mobbed for autographs by excited French school pupils.

They have performed in Oxford colleges, the Inns of Court, City churches, a Palazzo, the RSC Swan, the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and St Paul’s Cathedral. And now, with their latest offering, ’Trust Me, I’m a Doctor!’, they outface the pandemic itself, in a fabulous evening that weaves extracts from Moliere, celebrating his 400 th anniversary, with a kind of ‘Greatest Hits’ from some of their earlier productions.

Devised by Perry Mills, the evening opens in true Edward’s Boys style: bold, funny, and – literally – in your face. When the cast walk on, one boy coughs. Then another. As the audience laugh nervously, the whole cast explodes into grotesque spluttering and coughing, as they run around, crying ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ in multiple languages. It is both anarchic, and brilliantly choreographed – Edward’s Boys move so well, thanks to Struan Leslie! – and offers subtle homage to Moliere’s love of Commedia dell’Arte.

From there on, the action is fast, furious – and often very funny. In a succession of scenes from Moliere, who lanced the authority of the medical profession, virtually the whole company perform a wonderful array of cynical, pompous and duplicitous doctors. But this isn’t an evening of medic-bashing. The performance – which includes extracts from Jonson, Middleton, Chapman, Ravenscroft and Plautus – explores medicine, authority, and death itself. The spirit of Moliere is captured by a mix of knockabout comedy – giant syringes, hideous purging – and a lovely lightness of touch from the entire cast. The penultimate scene, taken from Bulgakov’s The Life of Monsieur de Moliere, is intensely moving. Moliere, instantly recognisable from his corkscrew paper wig (a typically ingenious Edward’s Boys prop) is left to die alone: ‘No doctor would attend him. Not one of them.’

‘Trust Me, I’m a Doctor!’ offers insight into language, and how we communicate, whether between doctor and patient, or – with Edward’s Boys performing for French audiences – between different people. There is an astonishing scene where Felix Kerrison-Adams is speaking French, and Jamie Mitchell English, and yet somehow you know exactly what is going on between them. As Perry Mills writes in the programme: ‘When both groups (players and audiences, tourists and hosts) really want to understand each other…it actually works.’

With such a close-knit ensemble, it seems unfair to highlight moments. Although if you have never had the chance to simultaneously laugh and cringe at Edward’s Boys’ version of the cuckolding scene from Middleton’s A Mad World My Masters, performed on this occasion by Joe McCormack and Callum Maughan – well, you have not lived. Another favourite was the hilarious, mistaken-identity surgical scene from Ravenscroft’s The Anatomist, brilliantly held together by Theo Richter’s Beatrice and Will Groves’ Crispin, constantly distracted by Johan Valiaparambil’s blood-spattered surgeon. Other memorable turns were Groves’ flamboyantly French Doctor Dodypoll, Ewan Craig’s dying Duke, Felix Kerrison-Adams’ outrageous ‘Frenchifying’ and his Monty Python-esque Caesar (‘Thaethar!’), Joe McCormack’s marvellously mobile features and range of accents, and the entire cast in Jonson’s Poetaster, led by what I can only describe as a masterclass in vomiting by Jyan Dutton.

Music is an intrinsic part of Edward’s Boys productions: live, contemporary, and always underpinning the drama. From Felix’s accordion-playing, to Talia (Edward’s Girl!) Calvert’s gorgeous Fever, there were some great musical gags, including The First Cut is the Deepest, and the entire cast humming the Dr Who theme. Then, with the lightning switch from humour to sadness that Edward’s Boys do so nimbly, the lights dimmed and the boys processed with candles, chanting Nashe’s Litany in Time of Plague:

‘All things to end are made,
The plague full swift goes by;
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us!’

Edward’s Boys are thrilling to watch. At the risk of sounding like some pseudo-physician Moliere would have eaten alive, I think it comes down to confidence and trust. The complete confidence the boys have in the text – however difficult – which in turn fills the audience with confidence, and the trust the boys have in each other. Part of Perry Mills’ great skill as a director is knowing when to leave (he is famed for ‘disappearing’ at the point of performance), but that is because he trusts the boys, and they trust each others’ abilities, as a result of the wonderfully collaborative process they go through. The boys (and Stage Manager, Emma Benton) run the show. They manage the music, the scene changes, and the special effects, armed with a deep understanding of how theatre works, that is instilled in them by Perry.

This became obvious when Edward’s Boys took ‘Trust Me, I’m a Doctor!’ to London. After a long, delayed journey, when their coach got stuck in Soho (Ben Jonson would have loved that), the boys had less than an hour to re-block and reconfigure their show completely. One would never have known, so seamless was their performance. The boys had the opportunity to perform in The Old Operating Theatre, that was once part of St Thomas’ Hospital. The wooden-tiered surgical theatre, high in the attic, is powerfully atmospheric – well worth a visit, if you are in London. The theatre was in use from 1822, and remains in its original state. A 19 th century surgeon describes students ‘packed in the theatre like herrings in a barrel, though not so quiet’. Students often passed out, from the heat and crush, as they watched the surgeons perform. It really did send shivers down the back of the neck, watching the boys perform this show in that space.

Laughter is the best medicine and all that, but if ever we were in need of a shot in the arm, it is surely now, and Edward’s Boys deliver magnificently. And so grateful thanks to the Production Teams, and to all The Players: Enrique Burchell, Ewan Craig, Jyan Dutton, Joseph Foley, Will Groves, Tom Howitt, Charlie Hutton, Ted

Jowett, Felix Kerrison-Adams, Greg Madden, Callum Maughan, Joe McCormack, Jamie Mitchell, Theo Richter, Rufus Round, Cameron Spruce, Seb Steven, Jed Trimnell, Johan Valiaparambil, and Joseph Valiaparambil. How lucky is Stratford to have a premier theatre company, producing excellent and memorable work, that re-examines theatre as we know it: Edward’s Boys.