Review: The Doctor Will See You Now, The Tramshed

If stepping into a hospital waiting room sometimes feels like being thrown into Lord of the Flies or Darwin’s Survival Of The Fittest, then this play is most certainly for you. The Doctor Will See You Now, written by Zoe Chapman and directed by Erin Chen, is a dark comedy that hits uncomfortably close to home. Amid the UK’s largest-ever nursing strike and a healthcare system stretched so thin it becomes almost transparent, there’s nowhere left to hide from an ever-growing tide of patients. 

The play explores what happens when patience, both emotional and literal, runs out. While waiting for their appointments, five strangers must contend with a failing system, an overworked and understaffed medical team, and each other. Trapped in a purgatory where time seems to dissolve, they’re slowly pushed toward chaos, with plenty of curveballs along the way.

Chapman, writing from the perspective of someone living with chronic illness, taps into the all-too-familiar feeling of powerlessness within a broken healthcare system. From the moment the audience enters, greeted by the nostalgic sounds of S Club 7 and the sterile blue lighting of a waiting room littered with unhelpful pamphlets, the tone is set. We meet a cluster of anxious patients and a single, frazzled nurse doing her best to survive the day.

Though the narrative moves at the pace of a waiting room, deliberate and agonising, the comedic timing is razor-sharp. Each beat is executed with precision. The audience is drawn into the quirks and complexities of the characters. Standout performances include Bronwyn Davies and Lee Hatsumi Mayer as a hilarious mother-son duo, who bring both warmth and depth to their roles. Their story subtly explores themes of trans identity and the tension of navigating a dated system with humour and tenderness.

The strength of the writing lies in its ability to balance comedy with discomfort. One character, who doesn’t speak English, spends the play coughing into his Sudoku book largely unnoticed and persistently lost in translation. It’s a quiet but powerful depiction of what it means to feel unheard in a system not designed with you in mind.

Morgan Carson, as the Nurse, serves as a living metaphor for the NHS itself. She never stops moving, ping-ponging from one patient to the next, spouting rehearsed lines and bureaucratic deflections, her hands tied at every turn. Carson’s performance blends comedic flair with an eerie exhaustion, as she delivers lines like, “I’m on hour 68 of my 72-hour shift,” without a flicker of irony. The audience laughs, but it’s laughter tinged with grim familiarity. We’ve all heard those “jokes” about the nurse hiding from you or your appointment being called at random. Here, they land differently; because they’re true.

As the tension escalates, the waiting room begins to feel more like a battleground than a medical facility. You begin to wonder: are we in a GP surgery or a gladiatorial arena? And really, what’s the difference? I found myself half-expecting the walls to collapse, unleashing a full-on bloodthirsty showdown. Instead, cabin fever simmers beneath the surface: characters gnawing on pamphlets, panic-reading First Time Dad, and desperately trying to reach the outside world, only to discover there’s no WiFi.

This is a play about waiting, but more than that, it’s about what happens when people are forced to wait within a system that no longer functions. It’s funny, sharp, disconcerting, and achingly familiar.

Written by Zoe Chapman 
Directed by Erin Chen
Sound Design by Mo Cole

The Doctor Will See You Now has completed its run at The Tramshed