Tiger Country review, Hampstead Theatre

Living in a house where every episode from nine series of Scrubs can be reenacted verbatim by a younger member of the team and Casualty is a must-watch, hospital drama is a hot pick. On that basis, the blurb for Nina Raine's Tiger Country really whetted the appetite: it is, we are promised, an 'action packed drama that looks beyond the corridors into an extraordinary workplace, full of professionals under pressure, driven by ambition, compassion and humour.'

If you enjoy the process of examination and diagnosis there is plenty in Tiger Country to keep you occupied: we have parallel resuscitations happening in A&E, a soap star on his way out, a surgeon battling cancer, and romantic relationships where pillow talk is about diagnostic practices and sex is shelved in favour of drinks with the boss to gain advantage. There's a recognisable disconnect between doctors whose ambition is to serve the patients, and those who serve only themselves.

The enormous stress of life on the NHS frontline is palpable in Tiger Country. It is easy to see too through Raine's writing and direction, why results are so often random with some patients on the edge being miraculously pulled back and others carelessly pushed over. When a system is at breaking point, patient outcomes are a lottery; but this much we already know. Hampstead's decision in the run up to a General Election, to reprise a play that debuted in 2011 to mixed reviews, suggests there is new or enhanced content to make our heads spin or pull at the heart strings. There is neither. With nods to cost and compassion fatigue, to racism and sexism, we have the ingredients but no recipe.

In conclusion: An excellent cast headed by Indira Varma is seamless across a series of fast moving and elegantly choreographed scenes, but Tiger Country neither develops nor challenges what we know and that's a wasted opportunity. It is the well trodden but always interesting hospital action one retains, rather than the characterisation or the analysis.

References
Tiger Country, Tickets

Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, London NW3.  Run ends 17 January 2015.