Grand Rounds
Grand Rounds takes an unlikely subject for the stage, a doctor’s lecture at a teaching hospital and turns it into something deeply personal. The talk is meant to explain why stories matter in medicine but the doctor giving it reveals far more than she intended. It is funny and deeply moving often all at once.
Adapted from Chris Adrian’s short story in Granta and directed by Polly Noonan, the play stars Caroline Luft as a pediatric fellow giving a grand rounds lecture. Luft sets the scene instantly, rushing in breathless and apologetic with her slides already out of order.
There is no fourth wall. The theater becomes the lecture hall, and Luft addresses the audience as a room of residents, joking that she won’t mind if we doze off. It’s a simple device but it works. The audience stops feeling like spectators and start feeling like students stuck in the seats watching the lecture unravel in front of us.
Kate, a colleague planted in the crowd adds to the illusion. Whenever Luft drifts into slides on empathy theory Kate interrupts to ask about the teddy bears leading a slow clap and a chant of “Teddy bears! Teddy bears!” The bit is funny but it also pushes the speaker toward the story she’s avoiding.
When Luft finally reads “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic” the theater goes silent. She stumbles, abandons it and rushes through a summary of sick bears and space aliens. Then she reveals what she’s been circling all along; her mother died yesterday.
The whimsical tale was a disguise. The real story underneath covers her childhood, her mother, and a young patient she lost and that’s where Luft is at her best. The photo of her mother on the final slide is devastating.
The theory-heavy middle drags a bit which is the show’s only real weakness. Luft lets the comedy fade so gradually that the grief settles over the room before anyone notices the laughter has stopped. It is a quiet and haunting shift, it lingers well after the theater goes dark.
Grand Rounds
Starring Caroline Luft
Performed on October 21, 2026
October 19 – November 22, 2026
Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street, NYC)
Reviewer: Hailey Fulmer
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