About the Show

A bold retelling of Arthur Schnitzler's play about medical ethics and its reverberations.

Having dazzled audiences with his adaptations of Aeschylus’s Oresteia (2022), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (2022), and Ibsen’s Enemy of the People (2021), bold director and playwright Robert Icke comes back to the Park Avenue Armory with the North American premiere of a compelling moral thriller. This burning examination of our time, a surprising re-envisioning of the 1912 play Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler, uses the lens of medical ethics to explore pressing questions of faith, identity, race, gender, privilege, and scientific rationality.

A moving piece of theatre, the production serves as a stark health warning for an increasingly divided country, where differing views about the way we see ourselves and the world we live in today only magnify life's complexities.

Critic Reviews (16)

“ ‘The Doctor’ subjects its main character to antisemitic dog whistles but, in the end, sees her downfall as her own fault and an opportunity for growth.”
Read more

“The play is like an inverted onion – layers pile on.”
Read more

“The play acknowledges that medicine relies on its own guesswork but shies away from exploring the inherent biases of medical research...’In The Doctor,’ Icke, like Wolff herself, holds on to a more willfully naïve image of science as a pure thing.”
Read more

“The play also illuminates, unhappily, how atomized and tribal contemporary society has become.”
Read more

“Playing any role, no matter how demanding, is to this consummate actress a way of life, not just some personal priority. I have no confidence in the commercial success or lasting validity of 'The Doctor,' but my money is on Juliet Stevenson.”
Read more

“Icke is too smart a theatermaker to lay his cards fully on the table, and he devotes ample time to showing how Wolff’s domineering personality has earned her enemies...The message is clear: Even in our allegedly enlightened time, we’re not yet through with inquisitions led by power-hungry mediocrities. And there is no delusion more powerful than that shared by those who know they are on the right side of history.”
Read more

"The Doctor is based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1912 drama Professor Bernhardi, but it takes a direct and deadly aim at the identity crisis currently plaguing the West… Icke, who also directed, keeps the action moving at an explosive pace, aided by an exceptionally assured company. Stevenson, who is nothing less than monumental, enters verbal combat with relish, her fury at accusations of prejudice and favoritism reaching extraordinary heights."
Read more

“It’s a fairly straightforward, almost melodramatic narrative, with the opening dramatic episode...But those flaws don’t matter in the face of Stevenson’s towering performance...The actress projects every flickering emotion with absolute clarity and an emotional force that will leave you shattered.”
Read more

Trailer

Creative team