Dr Semmelweis
Bristol Old Vic

THE prescient seeds for this thought-provoking and stylish production were sown before the Covid pandemic started and its development has been shaped by the collaborative response enforced by the ensuing restrictions.

Mark Rylance and Stephen Brown have resurrected the largely unknown life of a 19th-century Hungarian doctor who was a pioneer of antiseptic procedures and became known as the saviour of mothers.

Working in the Vienna General Hospital, Ignaz Semmelweis realised that the increasing number of deaths in the maternity ward were related to doctors moving directly from autopsies to obstetrics carrying infections with them.

By introducing the simple expedient of regularly washing hands, he saved thousands of women’s lives.

Generally ignored or ridiculed by the medical profession, his inability to deal with politicians and bureaucracy drove him to a nervous breakdown and with tragic irony he died in a mental institution of gangrene in the same year as Joseph Lister’s first antiseptic surgical operation.

This production ravishes the senses. A string quartet and dancers representing the lost women troubling Semmelweis’s thoughts, haunt both the stage and the auditorium as the play unfolds like a musical composition.

At the heart of the show is a captivating performance by Rylance as the engagingly hesitant, single-minded doctor whose inability to communicate his life-saving ideas to a sceptical world has a reverberating relevance to the wilful ignorance of current anti-vaxxers.

Among the other strong, supporting roles are Thalissa Teixeira as the doctor’s loving wife and Enyi Okoronkwo as his loyal assistant, both dealing with being cast aside by the increasingly distracted Semmelweis while still aware of the man’s struggles and medical significance.

Tom Morris directs the large cast so that naturalism blends seamlessly with stylised sequences and the stage is constantly alive to both the physical world and the memories of those lost to sepsis due to carelessly spread infections.

Ti Green’s elegant, mid-19th-century set vanishing off into the shadows reinforces this dark undercurrent.

This is a production that has fortuitously struck a profound chord blending a broad range of theatrical elements in a memorably exquisite manner and with a towering performance by Rylance at its heart.

Runs until February 12. Box office: bristololdvic.org.uk.