The Phlebotomist

by Ella Road

Bea meets Aaron. He's intelligent, handsome, makes her laugh and, most importantly, has a high rating on his genetic profile. What's not to like?

Char is on the brink of landing her dream job and has big plans to start a family - but her blood rating threatens it all.

In a world where future happiness depends on a single, inescapable blood test – which dictates everything from credit rating to dating prospects - how far will people go to beat the system and let nature take its course?

The Phlebotomist questions the value we place on one another, whether knowledge really is power, and if it's truly possible for love to conquer all.

Genres: Plays

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2018

Reviews

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

HOLY MOLY THIS WAS EVERYTHING.
Haven't read a play this good in a while. Still spinning.

[Tobias Koch · Rating 4 out of 5]

(a childish voice, o.c.) Let's learn the alphabet with the phlebotomist: A stands for Aaron, B stands for Bea, C stands for Char, D stands for David.... (Sorry, I had to)

An unexpected though meaningful convention of naming. Each of them a well developed character with his secrets, and individual traits, acting in one way or another relatable and familiar.

The play is divided into acts with short scenes. Each scene is precedeed by an interlude. Those interludes present different aspects, different problematics of discrimination arising with prophylactic genetic diagnostics, and are independent of the main story line (with two exceptions...).

Not only does the play visualize potential problematics of genetic analysis reducing individuals to merely public numbers and our data culture, but it does as well study human behaviour. Humans like to condemn actions of others if they themselves are not involved in them, but the situation may change.

The second part of the play presents several unexpected twists. Let the tomatoes roll and CURTAIN.

[Angellika · Rating 3 out of 5]

The drama is nice with pretty natural sounding dialogue, its a fun and quick read but the reason the rating is low is cuz i got less then I expected. The book stays pretty surface levels and while it draws parallels between racism and other forms of discrimination today, it never really dives deeper into anything or hints at much more. As someone with a bit of basic scientific knowledge and access to the internet, the errors or inexactitudes on the scientific level kinda took me out of my suspense of disbelief sometimes. Though I obviously dont expect an author to be a science expert, and I was in the beginning impressed on all the knowledge she seemed to have on neurodegenerative diseases, the full blood transfusion being such a big deal while bone marrow transplant wasn't even spoken off kinda seemed like a lack of research which I would have expected of someone writing an entire drama on this topic. Nonetheless an interesting read, I think im just a bit strict w my ratings it'd in truth be closer to a 3.75 but thats not a grade I can give lol.

[Ellie Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

eugenics: the play