The play follows Christopher, a man held in a psychiatric ward for a month and determined to leave, despite his insistence that oranges are blue. As doctors debate his fate, a junior psychiatrist argues for continued detention, while a senior consultant frames Christopher’s condition as cultural difference rather than illness. The disagreement exposes tensions between diagnosis, identity, cost, and responsibility, placing Christopher at the center of a system struggling to define care.

Written by Joe Penhall, the play confronts race, mental health, and medical ethics through sharp dialogue and institutional conflict. First staged in the late 1990s, it has become a modern classic and received the Olivier Awards, recognized for its examination of how power, prejudice, and policy shape decisions about freedom and treatment.