And disconnection – from home; family, and once-taken-for-granted faculties – is at the heart of Bernard MacLaverty’s moving tale of an elderly woman, Cassie Quinn, who is placed under observation in a Dublin hospital by her worried son for a decision to be taken on whether she’s fit enough to look after herself or if she will have to be placed in an old folks’ home.
This is only Belfast-born author MacLaverty’s second foray into theatre and started life as a short story, The Assessment, in the collection Matters Of Life & Death before being turned into a radio play. The transition to stage, complete with tweaks, added humour, and expanded characterisation, is a successful one.
True, not much happens in Liz Carruthers’ production, the piece for the most part a monologue (in the short story an internal one; here the wandering reflections of a woman talking to herself), wonderfully served up by Eileen Nicholas, pictured left. But with writing this moving and emotionally engaging who cares?
“They’re watching me,” says Cassie fretfully, her greatest fear not knowing what to do to pass the test that will seal her fate, or what will fail her. Her life story (widowed in the 60s; the child that lived three days; her dislike of the South) expounded around exchanges with Gavin Wright’s male nurse Gerard and son Christopher (David McGowan) who holds her hand like she was “his girlfriend”, and whose moral dilemma is one anyone with elderly parents will empathise with It is a simply told yet universal tale – one brimming with heartbreaking humanity, where, as Cassie points out, “old age is something you never get better of”.
Sponsored by Heineken.
Star rating: ****
