A great week for Cicely and David – the play

Since it was first released upon the world at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, members of the ATLANTES palliative care group at the University of Navarra in northern Spain have been enthusiastic supporters of my play, Cicely and David. In one week this autumn however, their commitment went beyond anything I could have expected, when in two separate performances, three days apart, they performed the play to a total of almost 1200 people.

How did this come about?

In late 2022 Carlos Centeno, the leader of ATLANTES, took steps to have the play translated into Spanish. The following Spring, members of the team carried out a rehearsed reading of the script at a staff away day. The reaction was so positive that they decided to take the play to the stage, never mind that no one involved had any theatre training.

After months of dedicated preparation, and with support from drama specialists at the University, the result was a barn-storming and exuberantly received debut at the annual conference of the Latin American Palliative Care Association, in Colombia, in March of this year. A few days later, and back in their home city of Pamplona, they performed the play in a local civic theatre and received a standing ovation from the capacity audience. I was lucky enough to be there that night.

On Monday 14th October, the players were back on stage in the theatre of the Museum of the University of Navarra. The performance was filmed for future screenings.

Three nights later the team was at the Conference of the Spanish Society of Palliative Care, in Malaga, where they performed the play, once again. This time for some 800 people, of which I was one.

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The play tells the story of a Polish migrant, David Tasma, who is dying from cancer in post-world war II London, estranged from home and family. A brief, intense relationship with his social worker, Cicely Saunders, helps him to find some resolution to what he feels has been a worthless life. In the process, an idea is born that later becomes the world’s first modern hospice, founded by Cicely Saunders in 1967 and thereafter to become a beacon for end of life care improvement around the world.

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The play has just five characters and proceeds seamlessly through 12 scenes in the course of one hour. For their performances in Malaga, I want to salute each of the five ATLANTES actors, none of whom had performed onstage before this year.

Ana Larumbe, a senior nurse in the palliative care service at the Clinica di Navarra, brings strength and compassion to her role as the older Cicely Saunders. In a chance meeting with a recently bereaved husband, Paul, in the garden of St Christopher’s Hospice and just months before her own death in 2005, she responds to his questions concerning how the hospice idea first came about. Ana superbly demonstrates the communication skills of Cicely Saunders, as she encourages Paul to tell his story, whilst she in turn responds to his flood of questions.

Paul is played by Álvaro Montero Calero, during the day an early career research technician, who expertly shifts the emotional register back and forth between his own grief, and the excitement of meeting the famous hospice founder.

We then pan back to the young Cicely, who we meet as a novice social worker in summer 1947. She is played with compassion and insight by Alicia Hernando-Garreta, an ATLANTES PhD student, who is working on the analysis of public writings about palliative care in Spain.

In the central part of the play the young Cicely oscillates between scenes with David Tasma, and with her friend and experienced social worker, Woozle.

David is played with gravitas and dignity by palliative medicine fellow Diego Candelmi, moving from confused resistance to his illness, through guilt and shame about past actions, to a measure of acceptance of his imminent death. He is supported on this journey in a series of visits from his social worker, in which Alicia demonstrates the subtle skills of listening, probing, and meeting David on the shared ground of love and loss.

In sharp contrast, Woozle, played by Ana Paula Salas, an ATLANTES PhD student in medical education, heightens tension in the story with a feisty combination of humour, provocation and caring insight, challenging Cicely, the novice social worker as she befriends David, and runs the risk of over-stepping her professional role.

The play ends, front of stage, with all the cast present. Ana Larumbe, with great dignity, beautifully gathers up the story of David Tasma, a man who thought his life had been a failure, but whose legacy lives on in the compassionate approach of ‘mind and heart’ that is so central to modern hospice and palliative care.

These superb performances are wonderfully supported by the directing skills of Vilma Tripodoro, working with Alicia Hernando-Garreta. The set design is imaginative and creates the different contexts of the action wonderfully well – the St Christopher’s Garden, two post-war London hospitals, the home environments of Cicely and Woozle, as well as Simpsons’ restaurant in the Strand. This is further enhanced by striking back projections of each place and also examples of popular music from the period, selected by Albert Recasens, and co-ordinated with the lighting by Fernanda Bastos.

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It was an honour for me to be at the Malaga performance, to feel the energy of the cast and the emotional response of the audience. When copies of the playscript in Spanish were given out afterwards, I was surprised to find myself being asked to sign them. It was at that moment that I had the particular pleasure of meeting board members from the Pia Aguirecche Foundation, which has done so much to support the production of the play and can see its value in sharing the ‘message’ of palliative care.

I have previously observed that writing Cicely and David was a team effort in itself. To then have it produced, directed and performed has also involved team work of the highest order. The ATLANTES group members and their colleagues at the University of Navarra absolutely embody these collaborative values. Together they are taking a play about palliative care on a fascinating and still unfolding journey: and for that I am deeply grateful.

Acknowledgements: Photographs courtesy of SECPAL and Vilma Tripodoro.

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