THEATRE
Descent
Oran Mor, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
FOUR STARS
Cat, table, ball. Just everyday simple words, until they become a significant part of a test for symptoms of dementia. Time was that successful architect Rob (Barrie Hunter) would have played the memory game for a laugh and gleefully exasperated his wife Cathy by reeling out the words until some other form of affectionate teasing took their place. Time was that this comfortably off, happily married middle-aged couple had all kinds of options open to them: the future could be an adventure, like the mystery walks Rob fondly remembers from his childhood.
Linda Duncan McLaughlin’s touchingly perceptive play – presented here in association with the Traverse and Luminate, Scotland’s creative ageing festival – gives a lively thumbnail introduction to the upbeat domesticity the couple enjoy, until Rob’s faculties start to unravel. Adult daughter Nicola (Fiona MacNeil) picks up on what Cathy dismisses as ‘glitches’ when she pops home for visits but her intervening causes melt-downs. Hunter catches, exactly, the volatile, aggressive rage of a man who resents a loss of. . . well, all too quickly, Rob isn’t able to identify how much he’s lost, as he querulously demands to know the time (again) and where his pen is (again). Wendy Seager’s Cathy is, in her resolute denial of Rob’s encroaching dependancy, as much a victim of dementia as he is. If the writing explores this misery with harrowing honesty, it’s Seager’s nuanced mix of self-deception, grit and above all fierce, unassailable devotion, that reveals the gut-wrenching grief of watching some-one die in essence while staying physically alive. You might not expect humour in the midst of such grim truths, but it flickers in and out, a sparky reminder of how Cathy and her ilk cling on to hope and humanity.
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