I heartily dislike going to the theatre to be “preached at” but very occasionally one encounters a play that provokes thought and greater enlightenment.

Robert Icke’s critically-acclaimed The Doctor, currently touring at Bath’s Theatre Royal until Saturday (September 17) before transferring to London’s West End, is one such play.

At the end of the first act, a Jewish doctor denies a Catholic priest access to a young teenage patient against the wishes of her parents. From that singular action, the following four acts trace the political and institutional fall-out that follows.

Based on the bones of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1912 play Professor Bernhardi, in Icke's adaptation, the Jewish doctor Bernhardi becomes a woman, Ruth Wolff.

The Doctor starts out as a fairly straightforward examination of medical ethics but the issues become far more nuanced and problematical, with the black Catholic priest being played by a white actor (John Mackay) and the girl dying from sepsis after a botched self-administered abortion.

Icke rapidly broadens The Doctor into an intense exploration of whether medicine can be the basis of a rational, humanist worldview in which the current climate of ‘woke’ identity politics is irrelevant.

He presents a renowned medical institution torn apart by religious and racial differences, by anti-Semitism, careerism and political intrigue, although some of the issues are explored with an overly heavy emphasis.

As the social media storm gathers pace, Wolff is accused of acting wrongly by her medical colleagues and is persuaded to take part in a TV entertainment show-cum-trial programme.

Here, she is accused of employing a disproportionately large number of Jewish women at the institute she founded to cure dementia.

Juliet Stevenson as The Doctor gives a heart-felt performance as she reprises her leading role in Icke’s five-star London production, which was originally seen at the Almeida Theatre in 2019.

Touring with a partially new cast, this new production is by degrees, upsetting, disturbing and wonderfully provocative. It certainly had Tuesday’s audience gripped to their seats.

It deliberately blends gender identity and racial ethnicity, leaving the audience slightly confused at certain points. It certainly left me with a greater appreciation of some of today’s woke issues.

The Doctor has designs by Hildegard Bechtler, lighting by Natasha Chivers and sound and composition by Tom Gibbons and is well worth a visit.

Tickets are on sale at the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 and online at www.theatreroyal.org.uk