Outpatient by Harriet Madeley. Park 90, 13 Clifton Terrace, London N4 until 7 June 2025, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Abi Mowbray.

Outpatient by Harriet Madeley. Park 90, 13 Clifton Terrace, London N4 until 7 June 2025,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Marvelous Madeley.”

Sometimes the play's the thing, sometimes it is the player and this is a case of the latter. Harriet Madeley's reflections on death comes much praised but actually it is her performance as Olive, a show business journalist fed up with a life of writing about Love Island who decides to write about death and interview people approaching it, that is what makes this a memorable evening. We meet Olive in the gym using a vast inflated medicine ball or running on a trampoline as she tells her story in the course of which, like Madeley, she finds out that she too has an illness – PSC, primary scker==    which can lead to death ten to twenty years after diagnosis and may require a liver transplant. Madeley tells her story while all the other people are recorded voices, so that the monologue, which is in effect what this is, takes incredible skill to keep moving and she and directed Madelaine Moore have managed that very well indeed. The sole flaw as the opening words which are a discussion between Harriet and her Director, presumably recorded as we only heard it. The sound was really poor but that is possibly just an opening night flaw, however a little more would help with what is to follow. Olive is pretty ruthless in seeking her story and during the course we discover she has a partner, also a journalist, but one of those women who cover wars, so she too has in interest in dying – they actually run the London Marathon together for different causes. Maybe one has to like Olive to get the most out of her story, and she is a pretty difficult woman to like as during the course of her research she discovers her own predicament from on doctor. It is a death sentence but one that may be something that comes sooner for her than death does for others. Death comes to everyone, quietly to some, in horrible circumstances to others – maybe to the elderly, or indeed the downright old, Outpatient is less of a treat than it patently was to an ecstatic press night audience. I am not sure talking about dying is such a taboo subject although for the young it is not something they are going to think about until they reach the age when their predecessors – grandparent, parents, start dying off. Then maybe the think about when their turn will come. Olive can be very funny – at times. She can also be rather annoying. However, no reservations about how well Madeley plays her. I suspect it would work even better as a radio play.

Cast

Harriet Madeley – Olive

Creatives

Director – Madelaine Moore

Video & Lighting Designer – Negan Lucas

Sound Designer – Bella Kear