{"id":918486,"date":"2026-04-25T22:27:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/918486\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T22:27:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T22:27:18","slug":"heartsink-riverside-studios-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/918486\/","title":{"rendered":"Heartsink \u2013 Riverside Studios, London"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Writer<\/strong>: <strong>Farine Clarke<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Director: Sean Turner <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The show blurb for Farine Clarke\u2019s Heartsink tells us the writer practised as a GP for a while before a near-death experience woke her up to her own mortality, so one supposes she knows a thing or two about how doctors deal with becoming gravely ill patients. One imagines, like the rest of us, each in their own unique way. It is a shame, then, that one cannot help but feel we have met GP Dr Jeffrey Longford, the gruff, knight-in-sour-armour medical protagonist of the piece, a fair few times before.<\/p>\n<p>Behind Dr Jeffrey\u2019s carapace of clinical detachment, prickly cynicism, and intellectual superiority lies a kind-hearted rough diamond determined to go the extra mile for even the most difficult of patients \u2013 or \u2018heartsinks\u2019 as they are known in the medical establishment. The always watchable Aden Gillett brings some heavyweight stage gravitas to the role, but there are times when the 85-minute piece feels like an extended take on TV\u2019s Doc Martin, set in an NHS in which everyone has oodles of time to listen to everyone else\u2019s erudite opinions.<\/p>\n<p>Glasses perched on his brow, stethoscope around his neck, the much-loved rural doctor, \u201cclever to the point of genius\u201d, Jeffrey, keeps patients in his surgery waiting for hours, but they apparently don\u2019t mind because they all adore him, just as they adored his GP father before him. Chief among the roster of loyal, grateful, waiting-room heartsinks is Irish hypochondriac witch Cara (Kathy Kiera Clarke shines, too, in an impeccable cast), who has an uncanny ability to make carrot cake and spot impending death. Dr Jeffrey indulges Cara\u2019s belief that something must be wrong with her, though the tests say otherwise, by booking her an appointment every week and giving her way more time than her allotted 10 minutes, because, well, that is the kind of curmudgeon-with-a-heart-of-gold he is.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Jeffrey\u2019s younger colleague, Dr Roofi (Vikash Bhai), actually took the empathy module (aka \u201cthe sucking-up course\u201d) at medical school, but still idolises his status-conscious, blunt-speaking older associate because he is wise and has the aforementioned heart of gold. There is usually a younger, more optimistic foil in medical dramas, there to peel back the layers of the senior physician\u2019s hard-bitten personality, and Bhai makes a decent fist of the role, even if the character struggles to move beyond trope territory.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Roofi and Dr Jeffrey meander around a discussion of Cara (\u201cthe patient was heartsink, the cake was heart-lifting\u201d) and how great it would be if computers had never entered general practice, before getting to the meat and potatoes of the business. \u00a0Dr Jeffrey has incurable cancer, \u201cI didn\u2019t know there were so many tumour markers\u201d, he says, as he peruses his test results and faces up to a crash course in being on the other side of the consulting desk.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly attuned to the need to stop labelling individuals as \u201ca cancer patient\u201d in favour of \u201ca patient with cancer\u201d, Dr Jeffrey finds himself on regular treatment visits to the cancer ward of the local hospital. There, he strikes up an unlikely bond with early-twentysomething Suzie (Megan Marszal), who has done the obvious thing for Cambridge graduates with first-class degrees in Philosophy: become a hospital receptionist.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Jeffrey takes umbrage at Suzie\u2019s determination to call him, variously, \u201cmy lovely\u201d, \u201cmy pet\u201d, \u201cpoppet\u201d, and \u201csweetie\u201d rather than addressing him formally as Dr Jeffrey Longford. Suzie is really a foil here, speaking truth to power and bringing the good doctor down a peg or two, thereby revealing his inner humanity. \u201cYou\u2019re a controlling fucking shit\u201d, she tells him at one point, which he is, though she doesn\u2019t really mean it when she says it. Everyone here is too nice for that. \u201cKindness is in your blood\u201d, she assures him later on, as if the audience has failed to grasp the message after 85 or so minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Complications arise when the previously anti-Dignitas Dr Jeffrey mulls over \u201cgetting his ducks in a row\u201d, by which he means taking a one-way flight to Switzerland to shorten the inevitable. Clarke raises the thorny theme of decision-making around assisted dying, but the discussions between various pairs of characters on the subject feel too by-the-book and impersonal to reach any conclusion. The ending feels as inevitable as many of the preceding discussions.<\/p>\n<p>Director Sean Turner is not in any particular hurry with a piece that seems a little too comfortable to stick to well-worn tropes, and the play only really takes dramatic flight when the surprising psychology behind Cara\u2019s hypochondria emerges. Top-notch performances aside, one never really gets beneath the surface in Heartsink.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Runs until 10 May 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tThe Reviews Hub Star Rating<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t60%<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tBy the book medical drama. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer: Farine Clarke Director: Sean Turner The show blurb for Farine Clarke\u2019s Heartsink tells us the writer practised&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[257619,748,393,257620,4884,257621,257,257622,6080,108190,257623,2764,16,15,257624],"class_list":["post-918486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-aden-gillett","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-farine-clarke","tag-great-britain","tag-heartsink","tag-london","tag-megan-marszal","tag-review","tag-riverside-studios","tag-sean-turner","tag-theatre","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-vikash-bhai"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116467705411087265","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}