The Nature Of Forgetting
If a seventy five minute play exploring the debilitating effects of Alzheimer’s reads like a tough sell then all the more reason to commend Theatre Re for having the guts to tackle such a tricky subject, and having done so, to congratulate them on producing a work of gripping intensity and theatrical brilliance. While Alzheimer’s is no longer the taboo subject it once was, writers and performers have nonetheless struggled to communicate the impact of having the illness. How do you translate the loss of coherence into a coherent narrative? Plays and films have tended to fall back on illustrating the illness as it develops, or the heartache of carers. Theatre Re’s inspired solution is to present the fragmentary disorientation of memory loss abstractly and (mostly) wordlessly, through a perfect marriage of mime, music and dance.
Artistic director Guillaume Pige, conceived of, directed and stars in The Nature of Forgetting, putting an extraordinary amount on his shoulders. Fortunately, he appears to be more than up to the task, and is superb in the part of Tom, a man in his mid-fifties who is trapped inside his head by the early onset of crippling dementia. He is ably assisted by a gifted supporting cast, with Louise Wilcox particularly affecting in the dual role of his wife and daughter. Bookended by heart breaking scenes of Tom as an insular sedentary figure hunched in an armchair, waiting for a birthday party he no longer really understands, the greater part of the play is all about the vigour of his youth. It is significant that most of the words we hear spoken are during those brief present day scenes, as his daughter tries, but fails, to break through the carapace of his illness. It is as if the production is making explicit the impotence of verbal communication for those cursed with dementia. In sharp contrast, Tom’s memories of growing up, going to school, getting married, having children, living a life, are vivid collages of movement and music, coloured by indistinct snatches of conversations barely recalled.
Backed by a haunting score composed by Alex Judd (who performs it live on stage) we see Tom face life in all its complexity, including his fair share of triumph and tragedy, presented in discordant and disturbing fragmentary vignettes. Memories are recycled, out of sequence, contradictory. There are scenes that appear to burst out, with characters reeling about the stage as one more memory dissolves before our eyes. Other scenes have the performers jerk and stumble, or appear to melt, as Tom further loses a sense of what he once was. These are thrilling theatrical devices, but they are also entirely legitimate and cogent expressions of how he is feeling – the machinery inside his head is simply no longer reporting back correctly. The production never resorts to clever dickory for its own sake. On the contrary, there are times when the disassembling of Tom’s memory is almost unbearably moving, as time and again we share his frustration at a narrative that is slipping between his fingers to a place just out of reach.
Anyone who has aging parents will empathise with his daughter trying to come to terms with the very essence of her father slipping away, but making Tom so young allows the audience to identify with him - where does my consciousness go, the play invites us to ask, if my mind starts to slip? By focusing on his thoughts, the emphasis here is on the individual as he suffers, and is what sets the play apart from the likes of” Still Alice” or “Iris”. It led my mind on a specific and personal journey – one that on occasions threatened to distract from the play itself. Such was the clarity and purposefulness of the production, however, that attention soon refocused, as time and again new and inventive ways were found to illustrate Tom’s isolation and frustration.
This was theatre in its purest form, executed by a talented young company with an economy and precision rarely seen in devised theatre. To say the play was enjoyable feels inappropriate given the gravity of the subject and, frankly, how frequently upsetting it was, and yet that is what it was, largely because the play does so much more than explore the tragedy of Alzheimer’s. There is a magnificent ordinariness to Tom’s life that we can all identify with. The Nature of Forgetting reminds us of how precious are the little victories and small pleasure of life in a way that is hugely uplifting and life affirming. We cannot, after all, mourn what Tom has lost, without also celebrating that he once had it.
