“The Doctor” at Park Avenue Armory (Photo: Stephanie Berger)

Park Avenue Armory’s relationship with writer/director Robert Icke continues to bear fruit with the latest collaboration in Icke’s semi-residency, The Doctor, a nail-biting adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi. Icke’s version brings this 1912 play into contemporary relevance, easily bridging the gap of more than a century, to depict anti-Semitism, abortion rights, racism, and genderphobia. But more than a straightforward update, Icke uses the plot of Schnitzler’s play to examine how we use identity politics to define ourselves and those around us. Icke has actors play across gender and race, highlighting how implicit bias, both in the audience and amongst the characters, tinges any interaction.

Professor Ruth Wolff (Juliet Stevenson), the founding director of a clinic within a larger hospital, is treating a teenage patient dying of sepsis when a priest (John Mackay) sent by the young woman’s parents tries to enter the room to administer the last rights. Professor Wolff, trying to allow the patient to die in peace and knowing the girl has attempted an at-home abortion, bars the priest from entering and a confrontation ensues. The aftermath stretches into every part of Wolff’s life, despite doing everything she was legally and ethically required to do. 

The tension is ratcheted high throughout the play. Icke has the action accompanied and punctured by a drummer (Hannah Ledwidge) floating above Hildegard Bechtler’s blonde-wood walls. The combination of musical cues and punchy end-scene lines gives the play a television feel, like a medical procedural–and I mean that in a positive sense. The quality of Icke’s writing and the stunning performances from the company, particularly Stevenson, keep the play from becoming an episode of Grey’s Anatomy; in less capable hands, it easily could’ve. But Icke’s dialogue, the wide, enveloping scope of the stage, and Stevenson’s spitting, chilling performance elevate the experience to something far more meaningful while maintaining the kind of tense tick-tock of hours going by in a crisis. 

Stevenson’s Wolff isn’t outwardly likable, driven more by her ambition and duty to her job than by any connection with other people. But in her nastiness, in her outright dismissal of other people, it turns into something enjoyable, or at least relatable. In her frustration with the ineptitude of others, Icke and Stevenson whip up a kind of gleeful pleasure in watching Wolff take these people down. It’s not an easy part to play, but Stevenson succeeds in turning this woman into someone entirely believable. When the tables are turned and Wolff, herself, is in the hot seat, there’s an attachment built to her that prevents us from applauding her own dismantling, even as she’s stepping on landmines of her own creation. 

Something happened in the audience, too, at the performance I attended. As Wolff was being questioned about her implicit bias, the woman next to my partner, who appeared to be of a similar age and race to Ruth Wolff, started to laugh, scoffing at the questions other characters asked her. As they prodded the titular doctor about her perceptions of race and gender and Wolff found herself without a clearcut answer, the woman in our row took the questions as a personal affront to herself as well. 

In our predominantly liberal New York audiences, it’s sometimes hard to see oneself on the stage, confronted with stark truths about our lives. This woman clearly thought that, in accusing Ruth Wolff of racism, the characters were also accusing her. As everyone else was silent, here was this distinct connection one person made: a deep, maybe unconscious, identification with a character. And that’s the magic of the theatre, baby.