Jackson Ward. By James Scott. Old Red Lion, 418 St John Street, London EC1, until 28 April (no performance Monday 23 April)
It's Dr Jack Jackson's last week as senior consultant at a rural district general hospital. There's the hospital concert in his honour to endure—replete with execrable sketches—and the opening of a new ward that bears his name. Speeches, buns, and tea from a big urn. “What would it have been like if you'd been really famous,” wonders his wife.
But none of it makes much of an impression on Dr Jackson. Indigestion was the only thing that had really mattered in his world; everything else seemed insubstantial by comparison. “It's as if a dark haze had settled over me,” he says soon after his retirement, and it doesn't lift.
It turns out that absorption in his work had left him no time for children, hobbies, or close friendships. He plays golf with a widowed colleague who retired a few years before him, but although he drops in for dinner twice a week he hardly knows him. He tries touring with his wife and golfing partner, but Scotland “all looks the same,” and they return early.
He and his wife see the obvious solution as a return to his old hospital in some capacity or other. Couldn't they spare him a few of his old patients to see? But it's not on. His replacement as senior consultant blocks an attempt for him to be awarded emeritus status. And he reminds him to return his parking permit. The only person who offers anything like empathy is a professional patient who seems to haunt the outpatient department. Her remedy for the vicissitudes of life—retirement included—is an operation.
Meanwhile, Jackson tries to recall a forgotten statistic: within 18 months of retirement, one third of doctors have a heart attack, one third have a psychiatric breakdown, but what happens to the other third? Presumably, what's happening to him.
Jackson engineers his admission to his old hospital, “with some sort of failure—heart, liver, kidney . . . brain.” The admitting doctor doesn't quibble.
It used to be for death that one had to get one's affairs in order. This play suggests that retirement deserves at least as much preparation and that overimmersion in work is not a good start. Doctors of all ages might take note.
Jackson Ward began life as a radio play (BMJ 1990; 301:993), and it must have made bleak listening. But this production is played for wry laughs; the professional patient could guy an entire comedy series. Playwright James Scott insists it's a “gentle play about retirement.” Scott, whose fifth play this is, is consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and chairman of its arts projects. He retires in August.