It feels like dementia runs in my Mum’s side of the family. Both her parents had late-stage dementia when they died. She lived and died with it too. Sometimes when a word or a name escapes me, it feels inevitable that it’ll be my fate too. Apologies to the next generation if it passes down the line.
Steven Millar’s play The Arcadia uses a set of interconnected stories to invite audiences to witness what it might be like to find your memories melt away through dementia. As the show begins, lights partially blind the audience and a powerful soundscape creates a melee of recognisable snippets from key moments in past lives: a phone call, familiar refrains from Dirty Dancing, a German radio station. These aural motifs will be revisited throughout the hour-long performance. Repetition is key to the overall experience.
Cat Barker, Christine Clark and Steven Millar flit between roles as patients and carers. We sense their paranoia. Their frustration as interruptions force stories back to the start. Their reaction to platitudes that can be comforting but can also lose their reassurance when repeated so often. The unnecessary shame of being told “you don’t want them to see you like this”.
The patients being cared for in the residential home have no lack of imagination. If anything, there’s too much stimulus. There’s also a cuteness, a hint that residents may be more perceptive about their environment than staff realise.
Audience members join in the actions of a song, as if we’re also sitting in a care home lounge, doing something that doesn’t come naturally. The performance grants us permission to laugh rather than be filled with pity.
The sparse set reveals the bare brick wall of the Lyric’s studio theatre. The furniture of life is constantly being rearranged as three wooden chairs and a table are moved across the stage. (Never get in the way of Christine Clark and her table!)
Jonathan M. Daley and Aaron Ferry’s lighting design renders a replacement set as bold overhead beams create spots on the floor in which the actors can perform. Low level lights cast dark shadows across the full height of the back wall: like monsters looming over the residents, or shadows of their younger days.
It’s often a bit of a red flag to spot that a play has been written by someone who also directs and stars in it. That’s not the case with The Arcadia. The level of generous collaboration with cast, creatives and mentors shines through Steven Millar’s work.
Sophisticated dramaturgy is at work even if the plot isn’t linear or strictly bound by traditional structure. There’s an incredible physicality to the performances – take a bow Amadan Ensemble – with a lot of acting done with eyes darting from side to side, as well as actors racing across the stage to secure their favourite chair or position. The sense of timing and coordination is striking.
The performance revisits at intervals the act of Steven remembering the night in The Arcadia dance hall where he went up the steps, past the barman and the coat attendant, and spots a girl with green eyes behind a pillar. It’s a story that struggles to finish and the audience are soon filled with empathy for his frustration at not being able to unlock the significance of this memory.
My second all-time favourite TedxBelfast talk was delivered by Chris Blake and was about the art of accompanying. At one point he describes his musical interaction with a young boy with autism who was sitting at a piano playing the same note over and over. Thirteen years later, I can still remember my emotional reaction to his story.
That concept is at the crux of the denouement of The Arcadia – an important teachable moment for audiences – when carer Christine doesn’t interrupt or jump ahead when Steven’s recollection falters, but gives him her full attention and presence. Tears will stream down your face when the joy fills his face and she promises that “you can go to the dancehall anytime you want to go”. The magic and intimacy of theatre.
The Arcadia completes its short run at the Lyric Theatre on Friday 10 October. This isn’t a dementia friendly performance: do not bring people with dementia along to see it. However, it is great piece of physical theatre that explores dementia in a deep and meaningful way and deserves to be witnessed and appreciated by wide audiences.
Appreciated this review? Why not click on the Buy Me a Tea button!
No comments:
Post a Comment