The fine actor Vincent Clark, known mostly for his work at Washington Stage Guild, plays a sick man in this one-actor show. A very sick man. Imagine yourself at a holiday party with an elderly relative who, ancient-mariner like, begins an unstoppable recitation of his illnesses and surgeries. Imagine that this elderly relative also has a sense of humor and access to some video projections. You pretty much have An Unhealthily Man Lectures You on Medical Issues there.
The problem is that there are no issues in …Medical Issues, aside from a cursory reference to the cost of hospitalization. There is just a capitulation of medical conditions: he is a “63 year old, one-eyed diabetic with high blood pressure and cholesterol, three cardiac stents, an enlarged prostate, compressed vertebrae, rotting teeth, clinical depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe plaque psoriasis.” He has also had several strokes.
Mr. Clark, operating at the front of a classroom at St. Augustine’s Church, is backed by a table with a formidable array of medications on it, to which he occasionally refers. Periodically, he is supplemented by a video. Once in a while Joan Marie Donahue appears as a sympathetic nurse, although she does not have much to do.
This is a sad story, which Mr. Clark will interrupt with gallows humor once in a while. (“Diabetes…I can’t feel where my feet is…” he sings on one video.) Perhaps it is actually about Mr. Clark (stage credits projected on the wall before we begin call the production “a great big lie based on a true story” and the medications on the table in the front of the room all have Mr. Clark’s name on them). If so, that is even sadder.
It is possible to use illness as a way of understanding the human condition. Susan Sontag was brilliant at this: her “Illness as Metaphor,” “AIDS and its Metaphors” and “Regarding the Pain of Others” provide a path to better understand what it is to be human. I did not get that from An Unhealthily Man Lectures You on Medical Issues, though.
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An Unhealthily Man Lectures You on Medical Issues by Vincent Clark . Featuring Vincent Clark and Joan Marie Donahue . Lighting design by Marianne Meadows, who is also the technical advisor . Arthur Nordlie is the stage manager . Produced by Vincent Clark . Presented at Capital Frige 2018 . Reviewed by Tim Treanor.
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