At the start of Robert Icke’s “The Doctor,” the actress Juliet Stevenson stands alone in a spotlight onstage. I’m a doctor.”As the play’s title character, a grammatically exacting neurosurgeon named Ruth Wolff, Stevenson will repeat those last two phrases many times as events unfold and Ruth’s clarity and intellectual certainties erode. Eventually they will transmute into something far more inchoate as her life unravels, and self-doubt begins to permeate her conviction that being a doctor is all that matters. In Icke’s version, the issues go beyond questions of medical ethics and religious affiliations to include identity politics and cancel culture. The play, and Stevenson, received rave reviews when “The Doctor” was first presented in 2019 at London’s Almeida Theater, where Icke was then the artistic director, and later after it transferred to the West End.

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Persons: Robert Icke’s “, Juliet Stevenson, “, Ruth Wolff, Stevenson, unravels, Arthur Schnitzler’s, Bernhardi, ”, Icke, ” Michael Billington Organizations: Roman Catholic, London’s, Guardian Locations: New York, obduracy