Review by Steve Desroches
The United States health care system is a mess. This big disaster of a bill that just passed will knock millions out of the healthcare system. Health insurance companies are beholden to shareholders rather than patient well-being. The current administration chose an odd mark Kennedy with a worm in his brain to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. And even many Democrats in power say we can’t have universal healthcare. Um, the United States sent a man to the moon to play golf and we can’t figure out how to have affordable, quality healthcare for all? Whatever. A big part of the solution to this immoral inertia is to organize and vote. But the short-term prescription for what ails us all is laughter. And Nurse Jackie is just what the doctor ordered.
In her brand-new show, and in her first full summer season in Provincetown, RuPaul’s Drag Race star Jackie Cox entertains in this hilarious health clinic of show. The aforementioned health-care absurdities are just the backdrop to Nurse Jackie, a wonderful mix of escapism, fun, and talent, sure to lift your spirits and lower your blood pressure. In this campy cabaret show, featuring all-live singing, Cox takes audiences on a wild encyclopedic romp through nurses’ rounds and the kind of medical school training you might get in one of those online programs or diploma mill universities in a tropical locale. But don’t go calling a lawyer to sue for malpractice, because wherever she learned her treatments and procedures for inducing laughter and removing bad vibes, you’ll feel healed. If you’re the kind of person who finds a parody song with the words “diarrhea,” “anal tear,” and “chlamydia” funny, then pop on a johnny and hop to this show as it is as fun as a colonoscopy on a water slide for those with a demented sense of humor and a bend towards the scatological.
Nurse Jackie is also full of heart, with no blockages or leaky values. Cox is as quick with kindness as she is wit. While high-energy, she also has a chill style that is inviting and creates an instant rapport with the audience and encourages a camaraderie within the room as she has a nurturing bed side manner, but with the sass of an over-worked night shift nurse who has had it with the patient in room 214, the one that thinks it’s a hotel and not a hospital, demanding pillows be fluffed and such, as she then goes on to the complain comedically to the patients she likes. You know that nurse. The one that slips you an extra apple sauce and brings the next dose of pain killers a little early. That’s Nurse Jackie.
Jackie Cox presents Nurse Jackie at Red Room, 258 Commercial St., Thursday, Saturday, Wednesday, now through September 6 at 8:30 p.m. Tickets ($41.50/$51.50) are available at the door and online at redroom.club.
