Connor Nolan masquerades as a medical professional in Noctium Theatre's The Country Doctor.

In the freezing depths of the vast Russian tundra, a disgraced medical student fleeing prosecution for his crimes happens upon an isolated surgery whose small staff are awaiting the arrival of a new head doctor. What follows is a brutal, blackly comic farce that looks set to be side-splitting, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping and promises to leave people in stitches - just perhaps not in the way you might imagine. 
Noctium Theatre's Co-Artistic Director Connor Nolan spoke to What's On about the company's first production, The Country Doctor, which runs at the Belgrade this summer.
“It's based on the writings of Mikhail Bulgakov,” explains Nolan. “Timing-wise, it was sort of strange for us because I read this collection of short stories and as soon as we'd decided to make a show out of it, we found out that Sky Arts was adapting it into A Young Doctor's Notebook with Daniel Radcliffe. But we ploughed ahead with it anyway. Ours is a sort of expressionist adaptation which is completely inspired by the book - we're not lifting anything really.”
Not for the faint-hearted, Bulgakov's visceral stories are in turn partly inspired by his real-life experiences as a doctor and feature some toe-curlingly gruesome scenarios. Like the author, Nolan seems to delight in the macabre.
“There was one story which we just loved instantly - I think it was called The Steel Windpipe in the original. This girl comes in and she can't breathe, so they have to perform an operation on her trachea to put a little pipe in. There's a passage that describes in very vivid detail them holding back the flesh of her neck, and then this trainee doctor gets completely freaked out and faints while he's holding her open with this hook.”
Nevertheless, those without the stomach for blood and guts can rest assured that what’s actually seen on stage is kept to a minimum.
“It's entirely stylised. The set comprises one table and five chairs, and then there are a few props around. We really liked the idea of keeping it as simple and minimal as possible, and then trying to create something fantastic and evoke the descriptive nature of the book from that. It's been fun finding ways to suggest gore and horror without actually showing it, while making sure it still has the same impact.”
Although the version showing at the Belgrade will differ slightly from previous incarnations, the play actually began its life almost three years ago. Since then, it's been continually cut open, hacked away at and stitched back up again to make it better, ready for performances in various small-scale spaces in Coventry and Birmingham.
“We keep going through drafts of it. It was at the Shop Front Theatre first in 2014, and then it went to the Ellen Terry Theatre. Then last year we remounted it at Birmingham Fest - we had to shorten it down to an hour for that. Now we've tried all these different versions of it, I think we've found the one we're happy with, but then in six months time, I'll probably have changed my mind.”
It's not only the show that has a history in the city - its makers are all based locally as well. Originally from Shropshire, Nolan met the rest of the company at Coventry University, where they created the first draft of The Country Doctor for their final-year project. The three core members of the group enjoyed working together so much that they decided to make a go of things professionally.
“There's myself and Jessie Coller, who are both artistic directors and company managers, and then there's also Charles Craggs, who’s our music director. We all perform as well - I play the doctor and Jessie plays a nurse. Then we try to use as many of our friends and people that we've worked with as we can to fill the other roles. We've got a couple of graduates from the university, and we're quite pleased to be able to support them and give them something to put on their CVs as soon as they've finished their degrees.”
Though Coventry is perhaps not well known for theatre, being partly in the shadow of nearby Birmingham and Stratford, for a small, emerging company, it's been an ideal place to start, with a strong, close-knit local network offering a wealth of advice and support. 
“I think it can sometimes feel like it's been overshadowed, but there's all this really great work bubbling away beneath that, and there are lots of small places like Ego and Shop Front and Artspace doing fantastic groundwork at grassroots level. It's been really good for us. The year we graduated, we were able to make this a professional working company, largely because of a programme the university was running with the European Regional Development Fund, which helps get businesses off the ground. Then we were also able to tap into the Belgrade as Springboard artists, and they've been really supportive, giving us a platform and a base to build from.”
Designed to nurture new talent, with an emphasis on artists and companies from backgrounds under-represented in the industry, the Belgrade's Springboard scheme provides training opportunities, office space and other forms of assistance in developing productions for the stage. Alongside Noctium, current Springboard companies include the innovative opera group High Time - which aims to strip the medium of elitist preconceptions and to introduce opera to new audiences - as well as the diverse Strictly Arts Theatre, which will present two shows - Green Leaves Fall and William Freeman - as part of the Belgrade's autumn programme.
Good company to be in, then. So with all this support to get them up and running at the start of their careers, what does the future hold for the bright young things at Noctium?
“Well, we received some Arts Council funding about a month ago. Some of that's for The Country Doctor, but some of it's also for research and development on a new show called Animate, which we started working on last May. It's an object manipulation piece, bringing to life very mundane, everyday items. So far, it's the story of a banana who falls in love with some flowers. Yesterday we had our first workshop with Beka Haigh from Frolicked, which is a puppetry company, and we've got others lined up to help us too. We're hoping to have the piece ready by early next year.”
New projects but perhaps not big new ventures far from home - at least not just yet.
“I think we like the intimacy of being a smaller company here and knowing everyone who you're going to be working with. We don't have any ambitions to go massive and be the next Kneehigh or anything like that, but we do hope to carry on ploughing away and doing good things in Coventry.”
A performance in the real Russian wilderness will just have to wait. 

The Country Doctor shows on the B2 stage at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from Wednesday 20  until Friday 22 July.