Brighton: Juliet Stevenson finally gets to play The Doctor again - three years on...

It is back now, playing Theatre Royal Brighton from September 5-10, just before finally reaching the West End.

And the great news is that everything that has happened in between times has conspired to make it even more relevant than ever, says Juliet Stevenson who plays the doctor of the title.

On an ordinary day, at a private hospital, a young woman fights for her life. A priest arrives to save her soul. Her doctor refuses him entry. In a divisive time, in a divided nation, a society takes sides.

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The Doctor, by Robert Icke, very freely adapted from Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler, has been critically lauded since it opened at the Almeida in August 2019.

“I am playing the head of a medical institute researching Alzheimer’s but in the overcrowded A&E I bring in a young woman who is dying,” Juliet says. “I bring her there to look after her. I have a personal agenda but she is dying.”

And when a priest arrives to give her the last rites, Juliet's character won't let him in: “I don't want to let him in because I don't want her to know that she is dying. She has sepsis but I'm trying to give her a calm and peaceful death and I don't want the priest to come in and administer last rites and give her a bad death.”

For research for the role, as Juliet says: “My family have taken me to the A&E department over the years plenty of times with accidents! I have seen quite a lot of hospitals and our very best friends are doctors but actually I've also just lost my mum to dementia and in the piece I'm playing someone who's researching Alzheimer’s but also my character’s partner lost someone to Alzheimer’s recently.

“In the last two and a half years my mum descended into dementia and died two months ago so really I've lived with it day by day by day. I feel I know huge amounts about the illness and just how brutal and cruel it can be.”

Inevitably Juliet isn't approaching the play in the same way she did last time: “A lot has happened including some big bereavements and the world has moved on but the issues that the play is looking at have got if anything more intense, those questions of identity and so on. Everything seems to have heightened those questions, and to be putting on the play now, it really does seem even more relevant than it did three years ago.

“And we're definitely finding different things. It is about half the original cast about half and about half new, and those of us who were in it before have really enjoyed bringing it back into the forefront of our minds after it's been simmering for a long time. And for the others we have absolutely made sure that they really do feel that they're coming into something new.

“The first time we played for seven weeks and that was late 2019 and we were supposed to be taking it into the West End. We did manage to get to Australia. We had two or three wonderful weeks there and we all flew back expecting to go into the West End but when we got back we went into lockdown within three to four days. It was all very sad. Rhythmically it was very weird. We've been preparing something. We were careering along down the runway and the wheels of the plane were just about to leave the ground but then we had to put the brakes on and there was a smell of burning tyres! But the whole country was in the same boat and there were so many other things to worry about other than our play…

“We didn't get any furlough or anything and I just built myself a sound studio among the children's bedrooms and I bought a state-of-the-art microphone and I did a lot of audio books. During the lockdowns people were devouring content and streaming and that just didn't stop. The demand for audio books went up and I quite enjoyed doing them. In fact there are aspects of lockdown that I really did quite enjoy. But I was appalled by what was going on in the country and the government and the state of the NHS and how much people were suffering but there were elements to the lockdown that I did enjoy like the chance to do some things that I had long wanted to do. I took up painting. I did a lot of gardening and I got to spend time with my wonderful husband. You just made the best of it as much as you could.

“But I did have a slight sense of mourning for this show because I was not sure that it would ever come back. When things started coming back, you were thinking that they would be smaller shows, two-handers and things like that. I was very aware that the big shows were not coming back, that people were not taking the big risks. And I was starting to think that The Doctor would not happen but (theatre group) ATG kept saying that it would come back. They didn't know when but they definitely wanted to bring it back.”