Mark Rylance returns to the stage as Dr Semmelweis

The Hungarian obstetrician Dr Ignaz Semmelweis does sound Jewish. His immediate ancestors came from Germany, a country with a long tradition of Jewish physicians. On arriving in Vienna in 1837 he studied law and philosophy before switching to medicine, and at the Vienna General Hospital, where he worked, he was maligned on ethnic grounds. What he is known for, moreover, is the advocation of something that Jews have for centuries done as a ritual before meals, albeit without the addition of chlorine: washing of the hands.

The good doctor was also, according to this play about his life now showing at the Harold Pinter Theatre, a keen chess player. In the opening scene he displays his intuition, determination and a measure of impatience in a game against his pregnant wife. But the historical figure saved real lives, not just chess pieces. Thousands of mothers and babies in the hospital succumbed each year to puerperal (childbed) fever. Semmelweis deduced that ‘invisible particles’ were causing the disparities in mortality figures between different hospital wards and his revolutionary idea, to encourage all staff and visitors to wash their hands, had a miraculous effect. As he promotes the new regime, his superiors at the hospital – and obstetricians at institutions across Europe – treat him as an upstart and refuse to accept his findings, with tragic consequences for the man for whom Joseph Lister, the father of modern antisepsis, would later express the greatest possible admiration.

As the obstetrician who refuses to put politics or hierarchy before the lives of women and babies, Mark Rylance brilliantly embodies his irascible urgency, even if that urgency occasionally means his words go unheard by the audience, unlike those of his level-headed wife, Maria. Though a lesser chess player than her husband, she is a source of his strength and is convincingly played by Amanda Wilkin. But she cannot stop the personal attacks on him – not least by his professor, Johann Klein – for the sin of being a Hungarian in Vienna. “It’s your passionate eastern soul,” Prof Klein, played by Alan Williams, tells the junior doctor when he shows intemperance.

Having been fascinated by the story of Semmelweis, Rylance had the idea for this play, which is by Stephen Brown and directed by Tom Morris, with the actor’s name also on the writing credits. This Bristol Old Vic production has been revised since its first run at that theatre last year. With the grim subject matter and miserable fate of the hero, its unexpected flashes of humour – including an oblique poke at Donald Trump – were particularly welcome. The movement, choreographed by Antonia Franceschi, felt fluid and natural; childbirth, and death, can both be a dance. At times, however, the play felt more like storytelling than drama and, delightful as a string quartet usually is on stage, the playing of music while the actors were speaking was an irritation, suggesting that the dialogue was secondary, or dispensable.

It is unsurprising that many people in recent years – including reviewers of this play for Jewish publications – have claimed that Ignaz Semmelweis was Jewish. Claims have persisted despite one of the doctor’s biographers, the late former professor of surgery at Yale Sherwin Nuland, having stated in an angry exchange in the letters pages of the New York Review of Books with that magazine’s reviewer of his 2003 book: “Like his ancestors, Semmelweis was born and died a Roman Catholic.” The doctor’s direct ancestors are traceable through parish registers, beginning with his great-great-grandfather, Gyorgy Semmelweis, in 1670, Nuland says, adding: “The name itself is Swabian, and most assuredly not Jewish.”

A caring maverick, Semmelweis belonged firstly to humanity. This story of his fight against intellectual dishonesty has a vital message for our times and deserves to be seen.

Dr Semmelweis is at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 7 October 2023. atgtickets.com