UR TV CAST

At least she knows what an arabesque is, and she was apparently very interested in hearing about ENB’s education and outreach work. Posh on pointes – who knows? It could be coming to a town near you.. What is it with British theatre and American plays involving baseball? It’s not as though Broadway is awash with dramas about soccer or darts, or that Off-Broadway reverberates to the sound of leather on willow. Two years back, the Donmar Warehouse had a hit with Take Me Out, which explored the homophobia and racism contaminating the sport That piece focused on an imaginary star player who was gay. The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, Rebecca Gilman’s new play, heavily invokes a real-life heterosexual player called Darryl Strawberry. I guess it’s a case of what you lose on the roundabouts, you gain on the baseball swings.
A black sportsman with a history of inherited alcoholism and well publicised recovery, Strawberry does not actually appear in the play, premiered in a skilfully inflected and focused production by Ian Rickson.

Instead, his identity is loonily adopted by a Dana Fielding, a female patient in a psychiatric hospital. Her insurance covers only 10 days’ stay and she isn’t ready to be ejected into the outside world.Fielding was hot property in the American art world until her paintings became tepid property after a critical pasting. This coincided with the walk-out of her understanding but sorely tried boyfriend. Negotiating a depressive episode, she’s convincingly played here by the X-Files star Gillian Anderson, with the fevered glow of a sick person who makes you understand why “hurting” has become an intransitive verb. Dana does not want to leave and she does not, ignorantly, want her personality “altered” by medication, so she pretends that she thinks she is Strawberry to prolong her time and to resist pills in the guise of drug-tested, honourable sportsmanship.You think: oh God, Gilman is surely not going to have the heroine find her way back to art by painting in the persona of a deluded “outsider” artist, which liberates from the stifling conventions of the venal white art-world But yes, she does. The parallel here is with Spinning into Butter, Gilman’s play about political correctness and racism on the American campus, which managed to foreground white angst with an embarrassing on-stage absence of crucial black characters. He could do me as a day patient on 30 June, and I will know if it is successful two and a half weeks later.19 June 2003 I fax a letter to my GP asking to be referred to Mr E, a plastic surgeon at St Thomas’s.30 June 2003 I arrive at the day-surgery unit at the Royal Surrey County at 7.30am At 12.30, Mr C arrives at my bedside.

Maybe she’s operating some kind of quota policy.The treatment of the psychiatric hospital is equally blush-inducing. He has not been able to look at my mammograms because Barts sent, instead, an X-ray of an ankle We do more mammograms and look at the slides together. The pathology report has finally arrived, six weeks after it was requested He is willing to take a further section. I will need to get a referral through my GP.At 8.30pm, Mr C calls. Mr D tells me that he is “not going to go rushing around” finding examples of his work He thinks my approach is “rather heavy”. We both agree that he is not the man for the job.I phone Nurse X. She tells me that it is now up to me to find another plastic surgeon.

We discuss options for reconstruction, but Mr D tells me that I “need to make my mind up” I ask to see some examples of his work. He will phone me as soon as it does.12 June 2003I go to the Royal London, where I see Mr D, the plastic surgeon who will do the reconstruction if I have to have a mastectomy “So, you’ve had a mastectomy!” he booms I point to my breasts, which are still there. I surf the internet for pictures of mastectomies and reconstruction They are not encouraging.31 May 2003I see Mr C The pathology report has still not arrived He is unable to make a decision about surgery. I phone Nurse X, who assures me that Barts is couriering down the pathology report today.30 May 2003The Homerton registrar has spoken to the consultant radiotherapist who says that radiotherapy without surgery is not a safe option. The pathology report requested from Barts three weeks ago has not arrived.28 May 2003I make an appointment to see Mr C privately. I see his registrar instead, who wants to look at my notes but finds the file empty. At the Royal Surrey County, I wait for an hour and then discover that Mr C is on holiday.