The Phlebotomist - Hampstead Downstairs

I can't bloody wait. Personally, I will try in vein to get a ticket.

As a genetics researcher I thought I'd give this a go - despite some shaky science, a few cringy moments and a script rather derivative of Gattaca it was pretty damn good I thought. But as usual with this kind of thing the human story was far more compelling than the exploration of ethics/politics of genetic testing (which has been done better elsewhere). For a debut play though it was great effort.

Seeing this Saturday as an early blog review raved about it.

Saw today's matinee & thought this was superb, thought-provoking & stunningly good for a first play. It deserves a longer life (transfer?) & is the equal of the best work I've seen in the main house & superior to much of that.

Great news.  Hoping for the same cast.

Good news as this was one of the best plays I saw last year and would have made my top 10 were I minded to compile one.

Ooh I do think like a play that I can have a good think about afterwards and I do like a bit of dystopia. Quite lucky then that I went to Hampstead theatre tonight and got a bit of both,

It's a really good concept for a play. Ok a bit Gattacca-ie but that was a long time ago.

Don't know how this played downstairs because they made quite a lot of the stage, lots of big videos and an expanding set which I can't quite see fitting in the small space.

Its whole focus is about 'what is best is right' and how that will eventually pan out. The changes to the set through the play is quite a good metaphor.

Although I do feel it probably focuses a little too much on the have's rather than the have not's.

Overall a really good play and an enjoyable couple of hours. 4 stars.

I notice I didn't write anything at the time, but I saw this downstairs and thought it was OK but not great, a feeling shared by the friends I was with. Good performances, some interesting ideas, but overall not that compelling. I'm a bit shocked it's transferred to the larger stage and I'm not surprised it's "exposed" up there, as chameleon puts it.

I can understand why people seeing this Downstairs might have been taken with it but once you hit the big stage and get evaluated on that level, it doesn't cut it.

Perhaps the biggest flaw was that the stuff happening in the recorded video was for the most part a lot more interesting than what was happening on stage. So many more interesting ways you could have approached a premise like this. Picked up a bit after the big twist but not enough. Really, way too much progresses off stage politically/socially relative to the length of the time that passes in the main story.

The science being portrayed is entirely unclear which matters. When we see the test numbers at the start, they are percentages. Which means there is still huge uncertainty as to a person's medical fate. But when schizophrenia is being discussed later on it's as though the science is not only accurate enough to predict 100% but even down to when the disease will hit. The social implications of knowing someone's tendencies towards disease are small, it is only knowing their exact medical future that is a potential powder-keg. And if we reached that stage of technology, the idea we would need post-birth abortion is laughable.

The idea that there would be one number out of ten makes no sense. It is portrayed that lots of tricks and fraud is going on, but someone would just invent a different metric which weights things differently and people who score higher on that metric would start quoting that instead. The idea that one specific metric would completely dominate society is ridiculous.

The stuff about fruit was just thrown in for no reason. Some of the dialogue is painfully bad, especially at the awkward interval break. Some totally off bits like the girl having her test done for Huntington's by one of her best friends who knows her father has the disease but is totally blasé about the whole thing as it's getting calculated despite the fact her friend has a 50/50 chance of being given a death sentence.

I could nitpick a lot more things. Stuff which you let go when the material works because in sci-fi there will always be some rough edges but this story wasn't involving enough. The premise is very good but it's not in the least bit original and the execution is pretty poor. Didn't believe the world at all.

Quite enjoyed this. Agree with the comment above that it could have been tightened up and done straight through (maybe drop the fruit subplot, or some of the videos). Worked well though and the escalating situation got gasps from some of the audience.