Wwhat a beautiful thing to do. When the great actor Andy Gray was being treated for leukemia before his Covid-related death in 2020, his friends agreed to put on a play inspired by his time in the hospital. When the nurses heard their plan, they had one condition: it had to be funny.
It’s hard to see how things could be otherwise with this team. Chemo Savvy – a play on Kemosabe, Tonto’s name for the Lone Ranger – is written by panto stalwart Alan McHugh and stars Gray’s comedy colleagues Grant Stott, Jordan Young and Gail Watson, all experts at delivering a punchline. So yes, it’s unashamedly about grief, guilt and the agony of treatment, but it’s also about hope, reconciliation and laughter in the face of adversity.
In a brisk production directed by Sally Reid, Stott plays Robert, a man forced to confront his past when he is diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS – cue the MDF joke). Young is his estranged brother William, still bitter about Robert leaving home when their mother was dying, but whose practical jokes suggest an unbreakable brotherly bond. Watson is excellent as the tormented mother and no-nonsense ex-girlfriend, and particularly funny as the nurse who performs a hallucinogenic Julie Andrews routine every time the drugs kick in.
On the waiting list for a bone marrow transplant, Robert nostalgically flips through his old cassettes. His encyclopedic knowledge of pop has become a trainspotter’s reflex – every situation a song title, every title a release date – but the threat of life and death helps him reconnect with the emotions inherent in the music itself. Chemo Savvy is less about death than about rebirth.
The result is a light-hearted wish-fulfillment comedy, thinly drawn but sincere. It is willing to look death in the eye, but, like Gray himself, laughs at the end.