Theatre review: The Clinic

Written during Dipo Baruwa-Etti's residency at the Almeida as the Channel 4 bursary playwright, The Clinic is a combustive family drama where race and politics don't even pretend to be far from the surface, but which ends up as tangled up by them as the characters themselves. The British-Nigerian family in question are a very successful, upper-middle class one whose achievements are so varied they sometimes refer to themselves as The Clinic, because of the wealth of solutions they could come up with for any number of problems: Segun (Maynard Eziashi,) turning 60 in the opening scene, is a successful therapist and writer of self-help books; his wife Tiwa (Donna Berlin) also studied psychology but never practiced it professionally, and instead has spent much of her life volunteering for causes and committees. Their son Bayo (Simon Manyonda) was recently promoted to DCI in the Metropolitan Police, and his wife Amina (Mercy Ojelade) is a Labour MP.

Their daughter Ore (Gloria Obianyo) is an overworked Junior Doctor, and arrives at her father's birthday party in combative mood, accusing everyone, especially her brother and sister-in-law, of not doing enough to improve the lives of the less well-off, particularly other black people.

There is a reason she's in such an aggressive mood: A recently-widowed activist, exhausted and depressed from both her husband's death and the frustration of not being able to effect change, has asked Ore for an unthinkable favour (the theatre's trigger warnings include suicide, but I still think it's worth mentioning that this is a major underlying theme throughout the play.) Tiwa suggests her own eccentric solution: Ask Wunmi (Toyin Ayedun-Alase) to move in with her for a few weeks, and see if she still feels the same after all the members of The Clinic have had their influence on her.

And, apart from a blip when Wunmi realises her hosts are Tory voters and is appalled at the thought of taking advice from them, it does seem to work, and she does start to envisage a more positive future for herself and her baby son. She also has an effect on the family though, and this is where Monique Touko's production starts to get a bit more muddled. This is a family where the pretence of functionality and harmony doesn't withstand even the tiniest bit of scrutiny, and given the explosiveness of the opening scene it's hard to see that Wunmi's arrival has any cracks left to deepen. It's a cuckoo-in-the-nest story where it's not particularly clear what the cuckoo's purpose is.

Not just because the family's differences don't need her help to come to the surface, but because her role in proceedings goes beyond enigmatic, to being contradictory. The cast are very good and probably the main highlight of the production, and Ayedun-Alase does particularly well to create something moving and relatable out of a character who one moment is an innocent thrown into a toxic environment, the next is the toxic presence herself, getting her feet under the table and manipulating her hosts, who are too self-absorbed to see her as anything beyond a charity case (you could make the argument for The Clinic being a kind of cousin to Parasite.)

The production as a whole has some of this feel of wanting to have its cake and eat it: Touko doesn't quite suggest there's anything supernatural going on but there's certainly a sense of something eerie. And what the hell does Tiwa put in her tea? At some point it goes beyond being a symbol of home comfort and Tiwa's bond with Wunmi, and gets treated as an actual highly addictive drug, before going back to being tea, leaving a loose end dangling. The strength in Baruwa-Etti's writing comes in some excellent, often funny but believable dialogue; the less tangible elements of plotting and symbolism are what trip it up at times: There's a very heavily-referenced theme of fire, as both spark of life and inspiration, and source of danger, and the play itself sometimes feels like it gets burned. Still, the cast are the highlight here, in the face of sometimes contradictory storytelling they take it all in stride, and while the second act may be problematic it flies by regardless.

The Clinic by Dipo Baruwa-Etti is booking until the 1st of October at the Almeida Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.