BLUE/ORANGE Will Be Performed at the OSO Arts Centre This Spring

The Olivier award-winning play Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall, first performed in 2000 is coming to the professional Fringe theatre located in the heart of Barnes village in South-West London. Performances will run at the OSO Arts Centre in Barnes for a two-week run from Thursday, April 29 to Saturday May 9.

The taut three-person drama explores institutional racism and pressures within the NHS, themes just as relevant today as when it was written more than 25 years ago.

Originally performed with a cast of three men, the new production will, with Joe Penhall’s approval, reframe the character of Dr Flaherty as a young Irish woman - played by Muireann Gallen.

Director Lydia Sax said this change will not only provide scope to explore another minority voice in an institutional setting where 75% of consultants and doctors were men, but also provides a more representative modern parallel, where female psychiatrists now make up around 50% of the work force.

The play tells the story of Christopher, a psychiatric patient who wants out but still thinks that oranges are blue. His doctor Dr Flaherty, a junior psychiatrist, is convinced that Christopher is mentally ill, and needs to be sectioned.

Meanwhile, the senior consultant, Dr Smith, believes that since Christopher is a Black patient, his perception of oranges as blue is all a matter of culture, and he should otherwise be released.

Producer Jamie Rycroft said: "Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall is a wonderful power play, where from moment to moment you can feel your allegiance shifting from one character to another.

“Much like the bowl of oranges at the centre of the play, which most characters see as orange and Christopher sees as blue, I think this is the kind of play that will have audiences debating with each other for a long time afterwards – about the pressures on the NHS, of how biases crop up in institutions, and how mental illness shapes your perception of the world.

“I'm delighted to be working with Lydia again to help bring her next production to the OSO."

Director Lydia Sax said: “When Joe Penhall wrote Blue/Orange in 2000, he was responding to an NHS already under extraordinary pressure: a system struggling with bed shortages, low morale and caring for people with severe mental health needs.

“Twenty-six years on, recent news headlines feel hauntingly familiar. Set over one day in a psychiatric ward, Blue/Orange uses satire to expose how power, prejudice and bureaucracy collide in clinical decision-making, and how easily humanity can slip through the cracks.

“Psychiatry sits at the intersection of medicine, judgment and compassion, and the presence of a female doctor, particularly a young one navigating an entrenched system, invites new questions about whose voices are heard, how empathy is expressed, and how authority is negotiated in spaces historically dominated by men.