Fast by Kate Barton & Stephen Bennett. Upstairs at the Gatehouse, Highgate Village, London until 17 November 2024,

3☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Not for the faint hearted.”

Fast started life as a one act play staged on the Edinburgh Fringe and at the Brighton Festival and the four star reviews it gained then were probably justified . But as two act play – in spite of a remarkable performance by Sarah Thom, frightening and completely credible as Linda Hazard, a Seattle quack and fraudster who treated patients with a totally useless starvation diet – it does not quite work. At least eleven of them died leaving a remarkable amount of money to their physician, having already paid handsomely for the treatment, Several people in the row in front of me left at the interval having had quite enough of the story and all those enemas and in a way one cannot blame them. It was only – there is no printed programme – after I googled Hazard during the interval that I wanted to learn more. She was eventually exposed, tried for murder, but sentenced for manslaughter – she was not killing patients by design – for up to 22 years. She did, it seems, believe in her treatment and considered herself a victim of men in the medical profession. Two years later she was parolled and the following year she was pardoned, one of her patients who survived having been the wife of the governor of Washington State. Linda lived to practice for much longer, going to New Zealand for many years.

Her story really is worth telling given the world of influencers today peddling rubbish, but possibly telling on the page rather than on the stage, certainly in this version which contains deeply unconvincing battles with the Seattle press,. The editor of the paper being coloured lead to some confrontations which have nothing to do with the real story which is what can happen to gullible people. Thr play focuses on her two most famous victims, English sisters Claire and Dora Williamson, who suffered from ailments almost certainly of the imagination, rued the day they came to Hazard for help. There could be a very good play in there somewhere, but a really hard look at how the story is told if it has to be told in two acts needs to be taken. Chances are 90 minutes and no interval would be the better length for a start. However as far as this production goes the cast of five work well, although Maia von Malaise and Imogen Gray as the sisters are possibly too patently in excellent health when they arrive, although they decline as a result of a course of brutal massages, lengthy repeated enemas and a diet of some sort of vegetable soup, most convincingly. Claire died, Dora was rescued and gave evidence at Hazard's triaal. However what holds it together is the performance of Thom as Hazard. She quite chills the blood and has an answer for every charge thrown at her. This woman believes in what she is doing, and is not evil in the sense that she intended harm, but just why she turned to practising her treatments at Wilderness Heights, her so-called sanatorium is never quite explained. It is, however, a 5**** performance in what could, but is not, have been a 4**** play. All who went put their lives at hazard.

Cast

Sarah Thom – Linda Hazard.

Karl Wilson – Sam.

Jermaine Dominique – Horace Clayton.

Maia von Malaise – Claire.

Imogen Gray.

Creatives

Director – Stephen Bennett.

Production Designer – Julia Olmscheid.