A musical about cancer sounds a dubious proposition at the best of times, let alone when there's the terrible precedent of
Happy Ending. At least
A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is a musical with actual songs in it; performance artist Bryony Kimmings directs, co-writes the book with Brian Lobel, provides the lyrics to songs by Tom Parkinson, and appears as a pre-recorded voiceover narrating and occasionally interacting with the cast. Parts of the play are verbatim, with the majority of the patients we see based on specific people, but the central figure is more loosely based on Kimmings herself and a prolonged health scare her son had: Emma (Amanda Hadingue) takes her baby son to an oncology ward for tests she assumes will take a couple of hours; as it becomes increasingly clear the results are bad, this turns into 24 hours in a purgatorial grey hospital ward with people at various stages of their illness.
