14/05/2019
Taken from 'Broadway News' 2018
British actor, Stephen Bergman, returns to the stage for a staged reading of award-winning playwright, Maura Campbell’s tale of … Stephen Bergman!
Ms. Campbell, while in London on another project, met Mr. Bergman…and read his journal about his ordeal and recovery from Stage 4 throat cancer. So taken with the story, she created MASSIVE. Massive concerns George, a British actor who endures intensive radiation and chemotherapy for a massive throat tumor caused by the HPV virus. Thanks to the morphine treatments, George thinks he’s dead – or at least his life is starting to look that way. Left alone with his mother-in-law (who’s addicted to online shopping), a pet Beetle named Prince Hal, and the ghost of his dead brother …George confronts the massive upheaval that is the stage show of his life.
Review Fix: What was the inspiration for this project?
Maura Campbell: I met Steve in London last December 2017. He was in a staged reading of another play I wrote. After I returned home, he wrote to me and shared that he was in remission for Stage 4 throat cancer, brought on by the HPV virus. I was immediately struck by the irony of an actor in danger of losing their instrument. He told me that our reading was the first work he had done since diagnosis and treatment. Originally, I offered to write what I believed would be a one-man show. But as I read Steve’s journals, watched the films he had made and had Skype conversations with me, I realized that this was a story about a family.
Review Fix: What makes this different or special from other plays of this subject matter?
Campbell: I feel like “Massive” tackles the family dynamic. I don’t know of a lot of plays where the central focus is a cancer victim (movies are common, though.) The play manages to infuse a lot of humor; I consider “Massive” a comedy. The humor comes at a high price since it is borne from personal and shared suffering.
