Tending - Riverside Studios

Tending, written by and starring El Blackwood, staged at Riverside Studios this week and last week, is a piece of verbatim theatre drawn from 70 interviews with real NHS nurses. With just three actors - El Blackwood, Anjelica Serra and Ben Lynn - and a simple set consisting of three chairs, a striplight and a surgical-style curtain as a backdrop, the production lets the words do the work.

The nurses' testimonies chart their journeys into the profession, their day-to-day work in the NHS, and the challenges they faced - firstly as newly qualified nurses ('they told me I'd be crying every day for the first 6 months and they were right') and then as early and mid-career nurses. Their roles made all the more challenging by funding cuts, relentless demand, and the long shadow of COVID. Their stories are by turns funny, harrowing and deeply moving, and as someone who has been both a patient and a visitor in hospital, I found many of the images they conjured very familiar, some of them painfully so.

The acting was outstanding - honest, nuanced and emotional. This was as powerful as anything I’ve seen in the West End, despite having none of the budget. Through raw, direct storytelling, the cast revealed what it really means to be a nurse in Britain today and also how they witness the human condition in all its forms from the sublime to the ridiculous. There were moments that certainly brought a lump to my throat, especially around palliative care (something I know about from being my late mother's carer), but the piece was never heavy-handed. The writing allowed for light and shade, making space for hope and humour alongside sorrow.

That said, the way the play ended felt strangely unresolved. Given the strength of the voices we’d just heard, I was left wondering what we were meant to do with it all. It felt like a missed opportunity—an ending that offered no direction. Instead, my friends and I came away feeling a bit despairing and helpless. 

Still, this was poignant, urgent, and vital theatre and shares more insight into the realities of the NHS than any episode of Casualty or Holby City. Tending is a moving reminder of the human faces behind the hospital scrubs and how critical the NHS is to our society here in the UK. 

You can still catch it until Sunday 4th May.