Lifeline

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Lifeline, the two-time Edinburgh Festival Fringe musical sell-out, arrives in New York with its heart in the right place. It is an ambitious attempt to tell the story of Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin which has become a lifeline in medicine for many infections that can’t be treated any other way. The powerful message of the show, unfortunately, is that since the indiscriminate use of antibiotics as a quick fix for people, livestock and fish, they no longer work in a great many cases anymore. There is a need to end this careless use of a once wonder drug.

In a first it also uses a chorus of actual local New York scientists and healthcare professionals who each play one week of the five week run at the Pershing Square Signature Center, and each of whom get to introduce themselves and their field of study at the finale. As written by playwright Becky Hope-Palmer, the major problem with the musical is its convoluted structure. The show alternates between the story of the life of the Scottish Fleming and a contemporary story of another Scottish doctor (Jessica Irvine) attempting to treat her best friend musician Aaron Elliott who has landed in her ward at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh.

However, instead of telling Fleming’s story in chronological order, it travels backwards and forwards in time beginning with Fleming’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm in 1945, then skipping to Athens, Greece, in 1952, then traveling back to New York and London’s St. Mary’s Hospital in 1946, then further back to St. Mary’s lab in 1940, and finally ending Act 1 with Fleming’s discovery of penicillin at St Mary’s in 1928. Not only does all this alternate with the Jess/Aaron story in Edinburgh in the present, it often divides the stage in two and tells both stories simultaneously. There seems to be no gain in telling Fleming’s story out of order, as it makes it confusing and hard to follow, while asking us to keep track of the contemporary story with its permutations and additional characters at the same time.

The second half which also parallels the two stories, those of Fleming and Jess, is more straightforward and easier to follow. Act 2 begins in 1914 as Lt. Fleming leaves London to help set up the World War I Red Cross Hospital in the Casino at Boulogne, on the northern coast of France. This alternates with Jess’ crusade as a result of her treating Aaron. Unfortunately, due to doubling, Fleming’s friend Captain Gordon Clowes also from H-Company, London Scottish Regiment is played by the same actor who played Aaron in Act I which is rather distracting as well as confusing. The two acts are very different in that the second act is centered around Fleming’s attempt to get the War Department to stop using antiseptics from spreading disease on the front and causing sepsis, while in the present Dr. Jess Irvine tries to get the British government to stop making antibiotics so available that they are no longer working in hospitals.

While there is nothing wrong with the material or the theme, it is the non-chronological structure of the show which sabotages its message and purpose. While the score with music and lyrics by Robin Hiley, with additional music by James Ross, is made up of pleasant ballads in the Scottish style, they mostly sound the same and fail to forward the story. Choreographer Wayne Parsons’ one big production number is to the lively “Waltz with Me” sung and danced by both Fleming and Greek doctor Amalia who becomes his love interest. The show might be more powerful without the songs or presented as a concert which director Alex Howarth’s minimal staging on the unit set by Alice McNicholas suggests.

While the acting is convincing, the lead characters are less interesting than the secondary ones. Matthew Malthouse’s Alexander Fleming is charmingly awkward but as written is so modest and unassuming that he almost disappears. Like Fleming, Kirsty MacLaren’s Dr. Jess Irvine is serious but completely devoid of humor which makes her rather one dimensional, but this may be mainly a fault of the writing.

Scott McClure as the guitar player and singer Aaron Elliott who spends most of his time in a hospital bed or wheelchair has a little more depth and obvious wit. His Captain Clowes is even more interesting though we see less of him. Robbie Scott who plays both Jess and Aaron’s best friend the politician Julian (attached to the UK’s treasury minister) and Fleming’s medical associate Melvyn Pryce is even more interesting though we never get his backstory. Nicole Raquel Dennis is heroic and endearing as bacteriologist Dr. Amalia Voureka who became Fleming’s second wife but that is not dramatized here. As Aaron’s mother Layla, Mari McGinlay is a feisty, independent woman who is a maternal influence both on her son and Jess.

McNicholas’ set design is made up of curtains on which the many settings and time periods are announced and a revolving turntable on which the action takes place, although why and when it turns seems to be totally random. So too Will Monks’ huge video projections occasionally reveal moments in the earlier years of Aaron, Jess and Julian to little effect. His lighting often turns the stage blue for a mood change, like a hospital at night. McNicholas’ costumes, mainly hospital scrubs, lab coats, and army uniforms, are rather bland and play little part in the visual aspect of the show. Nevertheless, Lifeline is engrossing and has an important and urgent message. However, it needs to find a better way to tell its momentous story than its convoluted and confusing structure.

Lifeline (through September 28, 2024)

Charades Theatre Company

The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W. 42^nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call OvationTix at 866-811-4111 or visit http://www.lifelinemusical.com

Running time two hours and 35 minutes including one intermission