Shaw can be good sometimes, but in The Doctor's Dilemma he is not. At the very heart of the play, the central dilemma is a forced, utterly artificial situation. The contrast between the deserving patient and the undeserving patient is stark and amateurish. The sick doctor is too wonderfully simple, fantastically modest, uncomplaining, virtuous,a complete paragon. And look how the undeserving sick artist is portrayed--undeserving because he is "immoral," illustrated not because he murders people, worships the devil, or sells opium to children but because he borrows money without any intention of paying it back. And it is suspected he lives with a woman who is not his wife. How can anyone believe such a reprobate deserves to live? And then there is what stands as the argument that he should be chosen to live over the modest doctor--he is an artistic genius with such transcendent gifts that one glance at his drawings is enough to identify him absolutely as a genius. Wouldn't it be nice in the real world if recognition were so immediate and complete? Not for a second does one believe in the central situation on which the entire play depends. The devotion of the artist's wife adds to the general air of falsity by being exaggerated to impossible heights.
Only one doctor in the whole world has the cure for tuberculosis? And he can guarantee the cure? Remarkable. He can handle ten patients at a time, maybe squeeze in an eleventh, but a twelfth is impossible? Really. How can we be expected to believe in such an artificial situation? In a philosophical argument such a strained case would fit nicely, but hardly in a drama, which purports to put the flesh and blood of real people on the philosophical abstractions.
As for being dated, perhaps in Shaw's time there was some credibility about the idea of doctors playing the role of virtuosos, each hanging his reputation on his proprietary "cure," but it is sadly out of date today, when medical procedures are derived out of scientific testing and universally shared.
The banter of the doctors has its entertaining moments, although their offhand willingness to let their patients die is another example of the play's artificiality.
Reviews here praise the acting. Perhaps that is true of the bantering doctors, but John Robinson as the main character caught on the horns of the dilemma of the title is so stiff and proper that he conveys no emotion, no humanity, nothing real. In the later scenes I was sure the play was going to have a twist ending with Dirk Bogarde somehow being miraculously cured because I did not for a moment believe he was sick and at death's door. Itès hard to say whether that was because I didn't believe much of anything about the play or because of Bogarde's acting.
The positive reviews here leave me puzzled. I wonder whether Shaw isn't being given a free pass because of some of his other plays?
Only one doctor in the whole world has the cure for tuberculosis? And he can guarantee the cure? Remarkable. He can handle ten patients at a time, maybe squeeze in an eleventh, but a twelfth is impossible? Really. How can we be expected to believe in such an artificial situation? In a philosophical argument such a strained case would fit nicely, but hardly in a drama, which purports to put the flesh and blood of real people on the philosophical abstractions.
As for being dated, perhaps in Shaw's time there was some credibility about the idea of doctors playing the role of virtuosos, each hanging his reputation on his proprietary "cure," but it is sadly out of date today, when medical procedures are derived out of scientific testing and universally shared.
The banter of the doctors has its entertaining moments, although their offhand willingness to let their patients die is another example of the play's artificiality.
Reviews here praise the acting. Perhaps that is true of the bantering doctors, but John Robinson as the main character caught on the horns of the dilemma of the title is so stiff and proper that he conveys no emotion, no humanity, nothing real. In the later scenes I was sure the play was going to have a twist ending with Dirk Bogarde somehow being miraculously cured because I did not for a moment believe he was sick and at death's door. Itès hard to say whether that was because I didn't believe much of anything about the play or because of Bogarde's acting.
The positive reviews here leave me puzzled. I wonder whether Shaw isn't being given a free pass because of some of his other plays?