Versions of Her is a solo show from writer-performer Tonnocus McClean. More Ted Talk than showbiz, it takes a documentary approach to examining the health industry through the testimony of his friend, long-term patient Kerry Walsh.
Walsh, an opera singer, has seven auto-immune diseases.
She has been diagnosed with terminal dementia. McClean interviews her and uses AI to turn the transcript into a script. He is shocked to realize that AI has made up quotes. This sets him on a journey of discovery about truth and lies within the health system. Do doctors deserve the trust we give them, or do they make up stuff too?
Versions of Her …statistically.
Reading from a tablet, he gives us some shocking statistics about comparative outcomes by race and gender. Doctors have historically been white men. So there is inherent bias that needs correcting. The depressing history lesson is interspersed with filmed interviews with the ailing Walsh, questioning and defiant.
McClean puts the medical establishment on trial and finds it guilty.
Pain is something that words cannot easily capture, so it is open to misinterpretation. Women are less likely to receive adequate pain relief, often their condition is put down to anxiety or hypochondria.
The fact that, in Versions of Her, McClean is reading gives veracity to what he is saying. But this act robs it of any potential theatricality. It feels churlish to criticize such a worthy endeavor. But a more solid grasp of the words he has written for himself would make it more of a show, and less of a lecture.
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Written and Performed by Tonoccus McClain. Interview Subject/Creative Collaborator: Kerry Walsh.
About the Project
Versions of Her is a solo piece built from real interviews with Kerry, a woman living with seven autoimmune diseases and a terminal dementia diagnosis. But this is not just her story. It’s also the story of what happens when a man is trusted to tell it: he is pulled into a world most men never have to confront.
Reviewed by Guy Picot.
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