Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2007

Shaun Hadnett
posted 28 August 2007

This single act, one woman play, written and performed by Jane Russell and directed by Ingrid Ganley, takes a pop at the pharmaceuticals industry and its clients through a series of short funny scenes. Russell’s strong acting technique enables us to suspend disbelief as she switches from one character to another mid-scene by changing accents and expressions. The show centres on the Pharmacist, an ambitious and cynical dispenser of panaceas, who confides her views to a work experience student, Frank. Sparse props - a counter, shelves, boxes and bottles of pills – are all that Russell needs to depict the various characters in this pharmaceutical farce.

An elderly customer, Rose, enters with a litany of complaints before revealing she is deliberately passive and vulnerable with her doctor to ensure she gets her prescription. Rose departs with her pills and the Pharmacist suggests that she continually seeks and takes medications ‘so she has something to talk about.’ A Bob Hoskins accent is adopted to recall a lecturer who taught that ‘Pharmacy is retail – you can’t upsell on the NHS.’ The Pharmacist expands the point to her student, underlining the high mark up on herbal medicines and speaking glowingly of the customer who requires no persuasion to buy the latest vitamin supplements.

The humour has been more cerebral than glottal until Russell steps into the shoes of Dave who speaks a kind of soap-opera Australian-ese. ‘G’day, I’m a representative of Wayne-Care Pharmaceuticals,’ announces Dave as he produces his ‘Blues Away’ pills and outlines the target customer – rich and depressed - and sales bonus plan that will net successful retailers giant plasma televisions. The repetition of the phonetic joke in the name of Dave’s firm establishes him as a likeable villain and the audience chuckles more audibly and often from this point on.

Then Russell’s main character loses her chemist’s cool, revealing that her boyfriend dumped her ‘for being a control freak’ She crumples to the floor sobbing while a heavily medicated customer tries to console her. Again, the switch from one character to another is impressive. The Pharmacist embarks on a monologue of personal pain over her lost love. She veers between planning an apology to her ex-lover for being too ambitious and scribbling a hate letter to him on promotional post-it notes. All this comes across as funny.

By the time the Pharmacist has taken some ‘Blues Away’ pills and alternated shrieking personal despair with autopilot babbling about the benefits of her medicines, Dave reappears and promptly cracks: ‘I can’t do this anymore – it’s bullshit’, he wails then proceeds to list side effects of anti-depressants. The Pharmacist responds by sobbing, ‘I feel awful. My boyfriend left me and I took some of your pills.’ Dave’s retort of ‘It’s alright I’ve taken my pills too and my mother doesn’t like me…I’m an arsehole!’ combines scripting and delivery to great comic effect. A ridiculous romance ensues, as the Pharmacist and Dave agree to eat junk food together and watch Moulin Rouge.

The strength of this play comes from its comedic depictions of our consumption of pills, and its avoidance of po-faced commentary on the pharmaceuticals trade. The play ends on a note of bawdy humour with the Pharmacist implying that a customer’s cream is for his nether regions and Frank can show him how to apply it.