Dr N.H. Service... by Paul Martin - Etectera Theatre

Dr N.H. Service, Ms Surveillance, and Dame Lansley May , written & directed by Paul Martin, at the Etcetera Theatre, a 40-seat fringe venue above the Oxford Arms Pub, in Camden, north London, from 25 to 30 June 2013.

A polemical play and political satire on the arbitrary power of government agencies and the marginalization of the independent judiciary in the digital age.

Dame Lansley May, UK Secretary of State for Healthy Minds, and aspiring Prime Minister, seeks to recruit Bavarian mercenary Dr N.H. Service as a consultant - to conduct experiments on patients and produce policy-based evidence for the British government’s risk-averse medical-surveillance technocracy, which is rapidly displacing liberal democracy and due process of law.

Dr N.H. Service wants to close the gap between government ministers and the judiciary by arming the government with arbitrary powers to target dissident bloggers and climate protesters. Unfortunately, there is a mole in the Department of Healthy Minds, leaking documents to a radical Liberal MP, whom the anti-terror police would like to arrest. Dame Lansley thinks that with her specialist skills in medical surveillance technology, Dr N.H. Service may be able to assist in the hunt for the terrorist by screening her staff for depression and erectile dysfunction.

- by Darren Dalglish