Critical Care

Critical Care comes to the Belgrade Theatre on Wednesday 25 November, with two performances on the one day: a matinee at 2.15pm and an evening show at 7.45pm. It's a play by Stacey Moon-Tracy, presented by LIT Theatre Co and directed by Orla O'Connor, with music by Derek Nisbet. The running time is around 1 hour 40 minutes, including an interval.

It's a play about ICU nurses during the pandemic, and it didn't come from a script written in a vacuum. Moon-Tracy developed it in collaboration with nurses from across the UK between 2021 and 2023, and she wrote it as part of her doctoral research at Coventry University—penning it while home-schooling her children. The dialogue draws on first-hand testimonies she gathered through that work, so the voices on stage come from the people who were actually there.

On stage are four ICU nurses: Frankie, who'd only been working in critical care for a few months; Morgan, who cut her maternity leave short; Sam, a senior nurse; and ICU Sister Alex. Their lives change almost overnight as they confront a deadly virus and the impossible choices that come with it—responsibility, survival, and the weight of the work. Director Orla O'Connor has described staging it as the privilege of telling the stories of the women who worked on the front line.

The Coventry date closes a short Midlands tour that took in Mansfield and Derby before a wider UK tour in 2027, so this is the final stop of the regional run. The 2.15pm performance is followed by a post-show Q&A with the director, writer and cast, which is a good chance to hear more about the research and the nurses who helped shape the play. Tickets start from £12 including the booking fee, with the 2.15pm show from £20 and the 7.45pm from £28. The age recommendation is 15+.