Resistance movement: how a play about penicillin brought the arts, science and politics together

2026-03-26 - 08:19

Championed by a former chief medical officer, Lifeline is both a musical following Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the first antibiotic and a warning about the threat of superbugs in the present day The floor of the United Nations is rarely handed over to musicians; when it is, it’s to global superstars such as Abba, Beyoncé and K-pop band BTS. So why, then, has a foot-stomping, folk-infused Scottish musical been added to the list of performances so influential they’ve gone on to fill the halls of New York’s General Assembly Building? The subject of Lifeline, an energetic, imaginative stage account of the life of the father of penicillin, Alexander Fleming, with a modern love story and a Greek chorus of real scientists, provides a clue. This unlikely show tells the story of one of medicine’s most pressing crises: antimicrobial resistance and the deadly global threat of drug-resistant infections or superbugs. Continue reading...