Review of care – the visual presentation of dementia raises important questions for all of us | Theater

AAlexander Zeldin’s characters are often on the beach, from zero-hour workers to unremarkable wives and mothers. Here is another group of invisible people presented by the writer-director: a group of elderly people in a care home.

Set in what appears to be a closed dementia room, the play is an unflinching portrait of what it means to be old, and a critique of the system that leads to deep loneliness in the last phase of life. In the book Being Mortal, surgeon Atul Gawande asks: “Why, as you grow older and sicker, do you have to give up control?” Zeldin explores this from the point of view of Joan (Linda Bassett, going overboard), who thinks she’s been allowed to for a little while.

The opening scene shows his depression before his daughter Lynn (Rosie Cavaliero) comes to visit. Lynn’s emotions are hard to come by (the human part or Cavaliero sometimes plays?)

Behind the family are other residents, alternately silent or reminiscing about the past, from Agnes (Ann Mitchell) who talks about her husband and his beloved group of otters, to curmudgeon Paula (Diana Payan), a former midwife. Some just mix and match on and off over and over again. When they die, they join the group.

It’s gritty, powerful and authentic, with brilliant performances from the actors who play the resident characters. At first, there’s a lot of random humor as the characters mess up, having awkward conversations, with themselves more than with each other. The audience is teased and threatened to laugh at these “characters”. At times it seems like a joke, a retired home version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (an adaptation being planned down the road. at the Old Vic), and the ward’s head carer, Hazel (Llewella Gideon), a version of Nurse Ratched. But it comes out in a terrible and terrible voice.

A turning point comes when Joan and her Lear-like companion, John (Richard Durden), embrace how loneliness meets love. She confuses him because of his late wife and he, understanding this, doesn’t care. It’s still a hug, so emotionally important for nothing. They look like Nagg and Nell, the couple in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame.

Political decisions are made, but carefully, from lack of resources to painful delays of days. Characters repeatedly talk about feeling lost or hidden; temporary blackouts can be counted as empty spaces between family trips. Rosanna Vize’s designs provide a breath of fresh air of the inescapable atmosphere that the love of the guests sustains Joan at this time. The scene where Hazel bathes him in bed shows how the latter’s professional care is like love. Joan kisses the woman while she is being washed. It is revealed in the Bible to be silent.

The combination of this play makes you feel that there has to be another way to care for our elderly, regardless of the heroes of the caregivers. “Someone has to take responsibility for what’s happening to us,” says the instigator Simone (Hayley Carmichael). The shock, disbelief and sad anger in those words is overwhelming.