AS we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service, a play imagining a future without it opens next month at the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock before going on to a full Fringe run at Edinburgh’s Summerhall.
Set 25 years from now, After The Cuts features a devoted couple whose retirement plans are scruppered when Agnes, played by Pauline Knowles, is diagnosed with advanced cancer.
Broke and uninsurable, the pair have no NHS to turn to – it’s all been privatised.
Ex-mechanic Jim, played by George Docherty, must watch his beloved wife die or take matters into his own hands to try to save her.
“We’re talking about a DIY operation,” says Glasgow-based writer, theatre maker and performer Gary McNair. “It’s about the most unfunny thing you can imagine but I can only get the audience to that dreadful finale by using humour.
“So much of life is far from funny, and we can use humour as a coping mechanism, and also in a more profound way to illuminate something about our lives.
“Humour is the strongest tool I have in my kit in order to get people to think and to feel.”
After The Cuts was originally presented at A Play, A Pie and A Pint at Glasgow’s Oran Mor in 2015.
McNair - who has recently been shortlisted for the James Tait Black drama prize - describes it as presenting “a dystopian vision of Britain that, since its premier three years ago, [I am] increasingly convinced may become a reality.”
Its revival comes in the wake of a recent survey by the British Medical Association in Scotland which found that 88% of doctors believe that, without a “significant” increase in funding, the NHS will no longer be able to provide comprehensive care within a decade.
“That is very frightening,” says McNair, an associate artist at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre. “Seventy years ago we created something very special, something that we sometimes may take for granted, and it feels like we’re harrowingly close to the end.”
Re-imagined in this anniversary year by original 2015 director Beth Morton, McNair says the impetus for the play was personal experience.
“We were in hospital for a couple of days when our daughter was born,” he says. “The NHS took care of us on the most important day of our lives. And that got me thinking about people elsewhere in the world who don’t have this.
“I thought about what would happen to all those departments, places you hope you don’t ever have to rely on in your life.
“You literally don’t appreciate it until you really need them, but when you do, you really, really need them.”
He adds: “It’s imagining our generation 20 or so years down the line. You’ve put in your shift, but by then there’s nothing left.”
After The Cuts is one of two plays by McNair to feature at this year’s Fringe - the first since 2012 he won’t actually be performing in.
Elsewhere at Summerhall will be Square Go, a two-hander presented in the round at Paines Plough’s Roundabout, a play about masculinity and violence co-written with the similarly lauded Kieran Hurley.
In a joint statement, McNair and Hurley said Square Go, which is directed by Dundee-born Finn Den Hertog, is a “play about two young boys in an average town in Scotland, facing up to and trying to make sense of the expectations put on them as men.”
It will tackle “playground violence, myths of masculinity and the decision to step up or run”.
After The Cuts: Jul 31, Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock, 8pm, £12, £10 concs. Tel: 01475 723723. beaconartscentre.co.uk
Aug 1 to Aug 26 (not 6, 13, 20), Demonstration Room, Summerhall, Edinburgh, noon, £15, £13 concs. Tel: 0131 560 1580.
Square Go: Aug 4 to Aug 26 (not 7, 14, 21), Roundabout, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 8.20pm, £15 and £17, £13 and £15 concs. Tel: 0131 560 1580. summerhall.co.uk www.garymcnair.co.uk @Afterthecuts
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