![\"Harriet](\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/harriet_vickers.jpg\")
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Years of experiences and memories have gone into Julie McNamara\u2019s play The Knitting Circle<\/em>. Examining the long stay hospitals of the 80s and 90s, through the lives of patients and healthcare workers who inhabited them, the piece takes us through the transition from institution to community care. McNamara is still working on the play, it\u2019s \u201cin progress,\u201d but last week the doors of the Soho Theatre studio were opened up, for three nights, to air the piece so far.<\/p>\n The Knitting Circle<\/em> takes its name from the women\u2019s group McNamara ran at Harperbury hospital, after she began working there in 1983. This period led her to write Jackee, played by Karen Spicer, the trainee social worker who tries to prepare the patients for their inevitable move out of the hospital, as Jackee puts, into communities that did not want them.<\/p>\n But her own experiences are just a fraction of the material McNamara used to write the play. After letting it be known she was looking for stories many came forward. She was able to collect memories from patients, nursing staff, and doctors from across the country, and also from hostel workers who took in ex-institution patients who became homeless. \u201cWe\u2019ve had a plethora of stories from people of every aspect of that culture, and I didn\u2019t just base it on Harperbury,\u201d she told me. The cast were carefully selected because they\u2019d had experiences of, or worked in, mental health, or had some kind of personal connection. McNamara then matched them up with the patients or healthcare workers and instigated visits and workshops.<\/p>\n From this research the play introduces us to characters which only differ from real people in name – \u201ctrue stories, every bit of it,\u201d said McNamara. These populate the closely named Harpers Park hospital; an archaic, inflexible institution where notes haven\u2019t been looked at for years and the mantra is to \u201ckeep calm and carry on.\u201d Some of the characters give short monologues, interspersed with the action, straightforwardly telling us how they came to be there. Patient Celia, again played by Spicer, describes: \u201cThey asked my granddad did he want me home. He turned around and he said no, send her away, shut her away for the rest of her life\u2026They put me down as an imbecile, morally defective, feeble-minded.\u201d Others say they were institutionalised for \u201chaving too many gentlemen callers,\u201d \u201csetting fire to a waste paper basket,\u201d or even “for being born to a patient.”<\/p>\n The play explores the difficult line of Harpers Park being both a prison and a home for those who live and work there. Although it\u2019s not shown explicitly, McNamara doesn\u2019t shy away from revealing the brutality that went on. One character, describing her mother\u2019s time, said she \u201cwas nursed on a women\u2019s villa, but spent most of her adult years pregnant, so there was something going on in there.\u201d In another scene Jackee accuses \u201cthose two orderlies took that frail old lady out and they beat her\u201d.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also recognised how much some of the patients, and even staff, need the hospital. In a telling and also very funny scene, Jackee tries to get the patients in the knitting circle to make some tea, sit down and knit, only for them to refuse or claim to be incapable, and the scene to descend into chaos. When the rigid world of Harpers Park is finally closed some manage to make new lives for themselves, but we\u2019re told many don\u2019t survive. As Jackee says \u201cpeople who hadn\u2019t been used to traffic, who\u2019d never shopped or cooked for themselves were just left to their own devices, in a community that didn\u2019t want them.\u201d Even Colin Shine, played by Vincent Jerome, the corrupt, violent, gangster-esque staff nurse who describes the patients as \u201cthe maggots of society\u201d doesn\u2019t make it: he commits suicide in the nursing quarters.<\/p>\n McNamara wants to develop the play into a bigger piece, to include more stories, and to take it on tour at the end of the year. Despite the fascinating stories that are woven, there were still signs the play was in progress. Some of the characters needed a bit more subtlety, for example Colin, who at times came across as a bit of a caricature. And the tense relationship between him and Jackee was very intriguing, but at times I felt this jarred a little. Also in the group knitting circle scenes I wanted a bit more action, a bit more physicality. But these are more work-in-progress niggles than big complains, and with the years of experiences and memories behind it, I\u2019m very much looking forward to seeing the finished piece.<\/p>\n