This little gem is part of this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival.
Some shows you wonder why they’ve been put on. There does not seem to be much rhyme or reason to them.
I never felt this with Zule’s one woman show DISCHARGED. This show was all about a working nurse singing the praises of her profession. To convey what this show was like, to paraphrase the Helen Reddy song, ‘I am a nurse, hear me roar’. She speaks of her job with so much passion and respect.
The show starts in a fun style with Zule playing her grandmother who was a nurse in World War 1. Sh e was a tough, drill Sargent kind of nurse. It didn’t matter if the patients didn’t like her and want to run away, they’ve got amputated legs!
After the grandmother segment Zule does a quick change and comes back as herself in a shiny, glittering outfit. The show really takes off from there. She tells us that nurses are one of the most trusted of professions. Zule asks if there are any nurses in the audience and plenty of hands go up, with some fun interactions taking place.
Zule has spent a lot of her time working in the Orthopaedic and Trauma ward. She said the hardest thing was to get patients to leave their bed and start trying to walk again. To reinforce this she sings a powerful self composed ballad whilst playing the piano about how ‘Everything is temporary’ and that this too will pass.
Through the show Zule showcased a good voice , poignant in the ballads and really going for it, literally belting the songs out , in the big ‘show stopping’ numbers.
She spoke about how sometimes the nurses have to deal with a poo- nami, if you get the play on words..
There’s a .song about how she as a Division One Registered Nurse has seen all the penises, in all their varieties, than you would ever want to see! This drew a lot of laughs.
Zule spoke about how she had her first ‘burn out’ as a nurse when she was 23 and after a short break she went back to her job more determined than ever to make a difference.
DISCHARGED had a good balance of chatting to the audience with composed songs regularly interspersed.
There was a very funny scene where Zule sang a comical number using medical instruments as her castanets.
One of Zule’s main arguments was that she saw nurses playing a much more important role than most people imagine. Doctors might give 10 minutes of their time when they do their walk through but nurses are with their patients day in, day out, whilst they are on the ward. She argued that nurses should be paid more because it is often such a challenging job.
My overall impression of this show – an enlightening look into a noble profession. The subject was clearly worthy and the show was told in a very appealing way.
We were happy to be discharged after seeing such a good show. The show has one more performance on Saturday 21st September at 6.15pm at the Fringe Festival venue at the City Tattersalls Club, Pitt Street, Sydney.