Juliet Stevenson Brings ‘The Doctor’ With Its Look at Faith, Racism and Abortion to New York: ‘I Can’t Think of a Play Where the Conversation is Hotter’
variety.comBrent Lang Executive Editor Juliet Stevenson seems almost ashamed. There was a moment a few weeks ago when the boundaries between Ruth Wolff, the gifted but abrasive physician whose downfall drives the action of “The Doctor,” and Stevenson became too porous. “I crossed this line and didn’t know who I was,” Stevenson says on a recent afternoon at the Park Avenue Armory, where she has been performing in the play since June. “I was some weird mixture of myself and Ruth.
And I got incredibly upset and couldn’t quite cope. I was crying buckets onstage, and it was really bad.” But why is that such a terrible thing? “That’s not appropriate,” she explains. “Because it’s not what Ruth would feel.
I’ve got to manage myself managing her.” And, one off night aside, that is what Stevenson has done brilliantly ever since she started performing the lead role in the Robert Icke play back in 2019.
The show has been staged in London, Australia and now, New York, taking on an unexpected resonance each time as the moral universe keeps shifting. “The Doctor” is a weighty work that tackles a myriad of issues — from “cancel culture” to the clash between science and faith.
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