Patient No.1 is a powerful and continually riveting fable. Set two years into the future, George W. Bush is admitted to an elite psychiatric clinic isolated from, and virtually unknown to, the public. As a famous psychologist practises his art upon his VIP patient the most startling revelations and the devastating truth of a once impossible outcome emerges.

Donald Freed says about the play, “Walt Whitman - America's Poet - predicted that if the United States ever lost her democracy, it would be ‘The Most Tremendous Failure of Time. America has lost her democracy, in all but name, and her way. Nations, too, can go mad.’ And that is why I have written Patient No.1, about the madness and death of George W. Bush and his country.”

During his acclaimed career Donald Freed’s plays have included Inquest (directed by Alan Schneider); Secret Honor (directed by Robert Altman); Circe & Bravo (with Faye Dunaway, directed by Harold Pinter); Veterans Day (with Jack Lemmon and Michael Gambon); The White Crow (Produced by Mercury Theatre, Colchester); Eichmann in Jerusalem; and the PEN Prize winning Devil’s Advocate . (Produced by Mercury Theatre, Colchester). His novels and films include Agony in New Haven; Executive Action (novel and film with Mark Lane); The Glasshouse Tapes; The Spymaster; In Search of Common Ground (with Erik Erikson, Kai Erikson, Huey P. Newton); The Existentialism of Alberto Moravia (with Joan Ross); Death in Washington; Killing Time; and Every Third House. Freed is currently playwright in residence at York Theatre Royal, and artist in residence at The University of Leeds.

Patient No.1’s outstanding cast includes American actor, Jon Farris (City of Hope, directed by John Sayles), Rob Pickavance (The Dumb Waiter and Broken Glass, York Theatre Royal) and Jonathan Race (The 39 Steps, West End and Three Men in a Boat, York Theatre Royal). The play is directed by York Theatre Royal’s artistic director, Damian Cruden (Twinkle, Little Star and Enjoy, York Theatre Royal), with design by Joanna Scotcher (York Theatre Royal’s forthcoming production of The Railway Children at the National Railway Museum). -- www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk