Art Smitten: Reviews - 2017

The Privatisation of Ward 9B follows a desperate psychiatrist, Doctor Craven (played by David McCrae) in his efforts to supplement diminishing public funding by dragging his patients into the merciless world of economic enterprise. Written in 1991 at a time when the Hawke-Keating government was privatising public services such as airports, airlines, telecommunications and banks, Bill Marshall’s social message still rings clear - we bring an emphasis on profit making and cost cutting into the provision of public services at the peril of those most vulnerable in society. As I was born in the year it was written, I’ve only ever known these services to be private, and wonder if the setting had a more meaningful impact on the audience’s members from an older generation. Walking into the intimate black box theatre at La Mama, a nurse seated in the corner of the stage judged our every movements. It was as if we had entered a psychiatric ward as patients instead of a theatre as audience members, for