This Might Not Be It at Bush Theatre

“Children emergency mental health referrals in England soar by 53%,” read headlines across the UK today. Although the COVID-19 pandemic strained our NHS emergency rooms to their breaking point, Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s This Might Not Be It suggests this is just a glimpse into the pressures the NHS mental health units are facing on an everyday basis. Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, the performance is an honest look into the every day of NHS mental health workers and starkly lays bare the failings of a collapsing healthcare system.

Jay (Denzel Baidoo) is an ambitious young professional entering as a temp at an NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service office. Shadowing the only other worker on the ward, Angela (Debra Baker), a seemingly hard-headed, slightly overbearing, yet good-intentioned NHS veteran who has worked in the building for over 30 years. This chalk and cheese duo clash against and bounce off one another through their comic naturalism depicting office life. Driven by his well-meaning intentions and personal feelings, Jay learns what is truly at stake within an overworked, understaffed and underfunded institution. His deep desire to help patients like Beth (Dolly Webb) ultimately lands him in hot water and exposes him to the harsh realities of dwindling resources and the new norm of never-ending waiting lists.

The audience enters the auditorium to Angela already working away at her desk: a small and overcrowded table filled with piles of patient records, loose leaves of paper and scribbled sticky notes, and pens which seem to be in constant surplus but disappear as soon as you need one. Her computer monitor is scattered with at least five open tabs, including her unread and overflowing emails and unorganised spreadsheets.

Jay’s youth is regularly criticised throughout the play and is often mistaken for naivety. Although he inevitably makes his mistakes as a new learner on the job, Jay is constantly underestimated and his willingness to bring a technological revolution to the unorganised and erratic filing system is met with a frustrated eye roll. Yet, the play ultimately champions the younger generations now entering the workplace and portrays them as critical to ushering in change to an evidently failing mental health system. Where Jay represents the tech-savvy Gen-Z moving into the job market, Angela portrays a well-meaning yet more outdated era, an era and an NHS which is not prepared for the influx in mental health issues modern-day society has ushered into medical practices.

Just as Jay shakes things up with a determination to change the system, the play calls for the major overhaul and institutional reform of an NHS which is drowning and taking its patients down with it. Although the play becomes a victim of its own lofty goals, the performance explores the issue of a broken NHS and demands change on behalf of its patients who desperately need support, and staff who are dedicated to help yet confronted by the deep-rooted challenges of change.

Olivia Gardener
Images: Ellie Kurttz

This Might Not Be It is at Bush Theatre from 7^th February until 7^th March 2024. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.