The Day Sam Died

Given limited resources, who should receive treatment and on what basis? Brazilian avant garde theatre company, Armazém, takes morality in healthcare for its subject. Ought the rich and powerful to have priority, as charismatic chief surgeon Benjamin believes? Or should the deciding factor be moral worth: can judge Samantha justify jumping to the top of a heart transplant list because she is one of the few judges who is truly just? Alternatively, is junior nurse Samuel in the right to insist that care be provided on an equal basis regardless of status or means? A series of interlocking scenarios, each with a different Sam at its centre, puts these questions to the test. But not fully. Nothing hangs together. The last of the plot strands concerning ageing Alzheimer sufferer, Samir and his relationship with his daughter is particularly puzzling as it only touches on the healthcare system tangentially.

In Brazil during the period 1999 to 2012, 70 per cent of hospital beds belonged to the private sector. Not that we learn this in The Day Sam Died. But we do learn that a system in which healthcare is provided according to need, and empty private beds are allocated to desperate public patients, is viewed as a hopelessly idealistic dream. If nothing more the play should serve as a salutary reminder of the importance of the NHS.

The Day Sam Died is terrifically stylish, full of sound, fury and high ideals, played out against the strum of loud rock guitars, but it never fulfils its intellectual promise.