367 words, 2 minutes read time.
Conor (Peter Daly) has had a complicated relationship with his mother, Joy (Venetia Bow). She was a famous actress – on television and everything – back in the day. Her gender-crossing portrayal of King Lear was legendary. As the story unfolds, we see the parallels between Conor and Lear’s estranged daughter, Cordelia, and between the maddened Lear and the demented Joy.
Lear threw Cordelia out when she refused to make wild declarations of love for her father. Joy had no connection with Conor until he wrote to her at the age of fifteen and kept her distance from him, not even opening his later letters.
In her care home, Liam (Manus Halliday) constantly rehearses scenes from Lear with Joy to ‘go with whatever her reality is’, to ‘be in her world’. He introduces Conor as the understudy. Liam is infinitely patient with his bitchy diva of a charge. Halliday brings humour to lighten the atmosphere just as the Fool did for Lear.
Peter Daly excels as the hesitant filial ‘understudy’ trying to find a way back to his mum. He plays along with Liam’s strategy as much as he can, but the emotional turmoil he’s in finally breaks through.
Joy doesn’t even recognise her son. He’s just a poor useless understudy who’s ’breaking up the lines’ in his delivery. We see that Joy must have been hard to work with in her prime. Venetia Bowe as Joy and Lear has you hating them both.
Some amazing puppetry shows us – through a veil – what this once proud and haughty actress has been reduced to. This traumatic play brings to life the effects of dementia on the people who feel that they have lost their loved ones. It’s gut-wrenching. It’s heartbreaking. We feel Conor’s despair and pain. Dementia often affects the patient’s loved ones more than the patient herself. Joy in her own mind is still the diva in charge of the rehearsal process. Conor is lost and broken. Conor is mourning his lost connection to his mum.
Like Shakespeare’s Lear, this production examines the nature of love and loss. It’s a masterpiece. The dialogue is snappy. The cast gels together well. I can’t praise it enough.
Reviewed by David Kerr
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