Dr Semmelweis Tickets

Grab yourself some theatre tickets for Dr Semmelweis and experience the brilliant Mark Rylance live on stage in a production that rocked the Bristol Old Vic in 2022. The Sunday Times calls the actor ‘a force to behold’, which bodes well for the transfer. Tom Morris directs, Rylance reprises the lead role, and it’s on stage at the Harold Pinter theatre this summer.

This is a thrilling new drama about Ignaz Semmelweis, the more or less unknown Hungarian physician who realised the life-saving value of hand washing and hygiene in the 1800s, way before anyone else. Sadly his findings were not just ignored but laughed out of town by top medics in Europe, when he should have been feted as a hero.

The idea for the play was dreamed up before covid hit and Rylance himself hatched it. He co-developed into the script with Stephen Brown, and when covid arrived it seemed fortuitous – the timing was perfect. This play reveals the absolute terror behind the unseen organisms that can kill us, as well as showing how prejudice and planet-sized egos can set humanity back when we could have made faster progress.

Rylance believes Semmelweis was just as important to science as Galileo and Marie Curie. He may be right. Thanks to the doctor’s discoveries the survival rate of mothers of newborn children could have been improved dramatically. His antiseptic washing could have saved thousands if not millions of lives. Sadly hand hygiene wasn’t adopted by the medical world until much later.

What's the plot of Dr Semmelweis?

Let’s hand over to Mark Rylance himself. This is what he says about the play, which tells the story of the man who first discovered bacteria. Looking back, it was one of the most important medical discoveries... ever.

As Rylance said, "Here is a person who makes one of the most important discoveries in modern medicine - what we now call 'Bacteria' - and yet he is pretty much unknown because for forty years, until Louis Pasteur and Dr Lister make the same discovery, no one will listen to him. Why? I was intrigued. The inspiration to act our story with a chorus of ballet dancers and a quartet representing the many thousands of mothers who perished unnecessarily, makes this a very powerful piece of theatre for me. I am thrilled to be reviving it in London at the Harold Pinter Theatre."

Who is Dr Semmelweis for?

Dr Semmelweis is recommended for people aged 12 and over.

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