14 May 08 (10:52 EAT)

Whose Life is it Anyway?


Whose Life Is It Anyway? was performed by The Moshi Players in Karibu Hall, International School Moshi in May 2003.

Heroes are mighty scarce in the first place these days, and then, when we finally find one who we can root for in the Moshi Players production of "Whose Life Is It Anyway" we find ourselves hoping he'll die! Is there no justice? And such is precisely the question thrust before us by that hero, Ken Harrison, a sculptor whose sharp wit and active intelligence are about all that survived a car accident which crushed his spinal column and left him hospitalized, a self-declared "vegetable."

Four months returning to a medically stable condition and a prognosis that he'll be able to live only with the constant presence of modern medical machinery and personnel have led him to decide that he doesn't want to. We join him, played admirably from a hospital bed for the duration by Hans van der Velden, as he is just starting his challenge of the system which won't let him die as he chooses - with dignity. The action of the play chronicles his saddening yet uplifting manoeuvers around barriers of traditional medical ethics, contemporary professional protectionism, and legal wranglings which lead ultimately to a bedside hearing and decision on whose life, in fact, it is.

But despite the sobering questions about death, free will, and social morality posed during Ken's quest, we smile quite a bit and even laugh some. It's a sad play but not a depressing one, more an exhortation to personal activism and a condemnation of passivity.

Ken is a man whose body may be broken but whose spirit is alive and well, thank you. He demonstrates his indomitable humanity with humour, a way no other living creature can. Van der Velden delivers Ken's witticisms and drolleries increasingly well as the play progresses. He slows his repartee with nurses and doctors to a more credible and ironically thoughtful pace. His sexual double-entendres and oglings come across at times more like adolescent lewdness (as he himself once admits) than adult black humour, but we forgive him.

Dr. Emerson, played admirably by David Macha, mouths the predictable Hippocratic counters to Ken's demand, but we never quite believe him; he doesn't rise above possessiveness of Ken as product to reach a legitimate empathy for him as a person. Leonie van Klinken's performance as Dr. Joan Scott is more credible. She grows more and more sympathetic to Ken's wishes and ultimately is just about the only non-obstructionist in the hospital (read: society.)

The supporting cast is strong, particularly the tough-as-nails nurse supervisor Sister Anderson, played by Sandra Riches. The play does move crisply, however, and we leave after two hours not only wishing we had the backbone of our hero, Ken, but also knowing that we saw some excellent theatre.



Brian Clark's Whose Life Is It Anyway? was originally written as a television play and first appeared in 1972. Later, in 1978, it became a hugely successful stage play - at the Mermaid Theatre with Tom Conti as Ken Harrison. The play's impact was so great that it was filmed in the United States with an American setting.