The doctor isn't for everyone

• Original title: Bílá nemoc (The White Disease)
• Translated from the Czech by Gustav Just

The play is a black comedy, 90 years old and very much of the present day. It is set during a pandemic. Above all, however, it is set at a time of massive preparations for war.

Only one doctor, Dr Galén – who has a Greek migrant background – possesses a cure for the white disease. The famous hospital director, Prof. Sigelius, tries to swindle it out of him. Dr Galén has other plans: he intends to bring about peace by refusing to release the formula for his medicine until governments stop waging war. There is something of Švejk’s wisdom in this, and something of Don Quixote’s.

Dr Galén, THE DOCTOR NOT FOR EVERYONE, treats only poor patients; he refuses to treat the rich and knows why. The arms magnate Baron Krüg (his onomatopoeic name appears exactly as such in the original Czech text) gains access to him incognito after contracting the white disease. Yet rather than give up the production of military equipment – which would be Dr Galén’s condition for curing him – he prefers to shoot himself. The Marshal (whom the author denies a personal name) is a fanatical warmonger and instils a spirit of harshness in the nation. When the ‘white disease’ strikes him too, he succumbs to cowardly self-pity and declares himself willing to make any concessions. But how credible is a warmonger’s sudden love of peace?

SiDat! previously staged a play by Karel Čapek in 2005: THE MAKROPULOS CASE, with Margarete Steinhäuser as Emilia Marty. For us, it brings things full circle to return to this author on the occasion of our theatre’s silver jubilee.