The Pacifist's Guide To The War on Cancer: A review

I hate cancer. It killed my dad and my mum. It is the reason why every couple of years I have to go off to hospital to be medically buggered by a man with a large hose pipe. I tell you this not to win your sympathy or your admiration, I tell you because, like millions and millions of people across the globe, my life has been affected by cancer.  Having cancer, or (in my case) being on a cancer-prevention screening programme, doesn't make me or anyone else special or virtuous. In fact, if you look at cancer statistics, it makes us quite normal.  The same point can be made about mental illness. Cancer and depression are so common that they are normal. They no longer hold any taboo.  My siblings and I compete over the number of polyps dug out of our lower bowels.  I have held forth at middle class dinner parties on the wonders of Rohypnol and the laxative power of Moviprep.  So, for good or evil, cancer, unlike our personal incomes, is not a topic that is off-limit.  Nor, in my opinion, does cancer bestow on those who suffer from it an aura of saintliness.  Byrony Kimmings, you are right on one point in your awful new show, 'cunts' do get cancer, as well as depression and every other known medical condition.  And I doubt whether it makes them any less 'cunty' or any more saintly.

This insight is the only redeeming moment in a very long and indulgent evening.  For me, the 'creatives' behind the all-singing, all-dancing cancer musical didn't really know what to say about cancer. Early on in the creative process they had spoken to cancer patients, but, like most ordinary punters who get cancer, their thoughts were not that insightful into the condition. Only the over-bearing mother stereotype expressed an opinion that added anything to the evening when she questioned whether Bryony Kimmings had a brain. Of course the director has a brain but, unfortunately, in my opinion, it wasn't fully engaged in the creation of this show.

The first Act is pure 1980s 'big issue' youth theatre, complete with simple-minded music, pointlessly energetic choreography and banal lyrics (excepting the reference to cunts).  Who knew that hospitals are places where you are required to wait around a lot and where medical staff speak in jargon?  Who would have guessed that social media is a platform for hypocrisy?  And who knew that tumours, if untreated, grow? (Many thanks to the designer for giving expression to this last point in giant inflatable tumours that invade the stage throughout the show).

If the first Act was bad (which it was), the second Act was truly appalling as we 'moved towards the real' in the words of Kimmings' voice over. (Yes, Kimmings appears in the show, right from the get go as a 'voice off'.)  This movement towards 'the real' began with the main character, spotlit on the stage for an absolute age, doing nothing while the sound of what I took to be a motorway pile-up played in the background.  And that, my friends, is what passes today for ground-breaking theatre these days. More deep insights followed.  Hospitals at night are eerie places apparently.  Mothers want to protect their children. Shocker!

Eventually and predictably, the show broke down, the music stopped (Thanks be to God!) and the actors began lip-synching to the actual words of the cancer patients whom they had been portraying. You see, we were moving towards the real in a very hippyish, therapeutic way.  The disembodied voice of Kimmings encouraged the actors to drop all artifice  and be real about their own encounters with cancer.  So, as one might expect, we got references to 'Grandad Bill' and 'Aunty Maureen'.  Then the audience were encouraged to join in. As before we had a random list of names.  I have little doubt that behind each name there lies a real personal tragedy.  But, in our post-Diana Princess of our Hearts world, there was, for me, a sense of my fellow audience members wallowing in this collective narcissistic grief. Personally, I wanted to puncture this 'grief-fest' by shouting out the name of my daughter's hamster who had lost her fight against cancer only days before. (Yes, people, hamsters get cancer too.) Even greater was the urge to proclaim loudly the death from their brush with cancer of the actors' careers, but I managed to restrain myself. Like all church services (good and bad) the evening ended with communal singing and we all congratulated ourselves on being 'real' and being survivors.  Standing ovations followed but it was hard to tell whether the audience were applauding the performers or themselves.

I have seen work by Complicite many times before and have been impressed by its inventiveness and originality.  Recently, I really liked Simon Mc Burney's one man show, 'The Encounter' and I spotted a couple of things from it that Kimmings had borrowed in her show.  I was therefore really disappointed by The Pacificist's Guide to the War on Cancer. A mash up of 80s 'big issue' youth theatre and a New Age church service, it offered me no new insights into cancer.  It simply wasn't dark enough, funny enough or clever enough.  But, here's the thing, the kids, generation Y, the safe-spacers, the snowflakes, all have taken to Twitter to say how much they truly loved it.  'Look how cool I am!  I went to see a musical about cancer! Get me!' It seems the 'expose' of social media, like all of the other messages in the show, went unnoticed. A truly irreverent, darkly comic show about cancer needs to be written.  Unfortunately, 'A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer' is nowhere near being it, despite what Twitter or Facebook might tell you.