This Couldn’t Be (Bush Theatre, London)
Verdict: It could be
Thanks to this week’s depressing news about a deepening crisis in children’s mental health, Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s new play, This Might Not Be It, is unfortunately timely.
However, it is also a sweetly hopeful drama the size of a broom cupboard that takes place on the other side of the Perspex wall at an outpatient clinic for children and young people.
The action revolves around Angela and Jay, a double act of an old receptionist and a young idealist.
Angela manages her own tailor-made filing system under the motto ‘refer, refer, refer’.
This Might Not Be It production photos taken on January 30, 2024, taken at Theater Bush, London
Jay is a therapist-in-training determined to digitize the folders scattered across the office floor.
Both answer to the unseen Gary – the NHS’s answer to Samuel Beckett’s Godot, with statements made from the 4th floor.
Chetin-Leuner shows a talent for tautology with lines like Jay’s “you don’t know things until you know things.”
The action revolves around Angela and Jay, a double act of an old receptionist and a young idealist
But she also suggests how the dysfunctional NHS somehow still manages to function – and how staff can connect with patients despite the crushing bureaucracy and the temptation to despair.
This could be explored more fully in a longer piece, but like the writing, Ed Madden’s production is a hyper-real distillation of a dog-eared hospital office.
There are nice turns from Debra Baker’s official but warm-hearted Angela, Denzel Baidoo’s naive and shy Jay, plus Dolly Webb as an all-too-familiar, vulnerable teenage girl.