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Lucas Elkin: On Loss

Life’s a pudding full of plums – Care’s a canker that benumbs

Last week, an old friend of mine died. When I say ‘old’, I mean it in both senses of the word: we’d known each other for fifteen years or so; he was a touch past his 93rd birthday. We’d got to know each other via a shared interest in a somewhat obscure branch of horology. After being introduced by another mutual clocks friend, to find that one of the world’s most knowledgeable authorities in the field happened, by complete chance, to live a mile up the road from me has been one of life’s great boons. We complemented each other well: if he bought something, or wanted to move some items around in his collection, I’d do the manual labour. If I came across an auction oddity, he’d give freely and generously of his time in examining and evaluating the item for me. If we wanted to attend a lecture or visit a collection, I’d drive and he’d buy the tea when we got there. His 90th birthday lunch was a splendid occasion, a large group regaled with many cheerful anecdotes and laughter. It has only been the last three years – a very short period in the scale of a long life – that has brought about incurable cancer, frequent hospital visits, nursing homes and constant care.

On one of my last visits, he started chatting about the physics of aging: to do with neutron particles, he wondered, his ever-enquiring, un-dimmed mind clearly turning the matter over during the long hours of limited physical ability. “Never get old!” he advised me.

This week I’m back in London, looking after my Dad (known to regular readers as Mr E, or Susan calls him, My Loved One or MLO) whilst my mother has a few well-earned days away with an old friend/ work colleague and a bottle of gin.

And I’m observing a completely different form of aging and illness first hand. Since I last spent a length of time with my Dad, any capacity for conversation has completely gone. We exchange bizarre non-sequiturs: “Would you like egg on toast for lunch?” I’ll ask. “It depends on when we cut the roses back” comes the answer. Or I say “Let’s dry your feet” and he replies: “It’s all to do with annual copyright, of course”

As Susan often comments, this is a frustrating sort of existence. Infinite patience is required. And something new I hadn’t realised before is that it’s also pretty lonely for the carer. Although there’s someone here, actually he’s not here at all.

“Never get old…” the sage clocks man said. It starts to look like sound advice.

When it’s gone, it’s gone

When my elder daughter (now a student nurse and known to regular readers of this blog as GD1) was about three, she took great delight in hiding things.

“Where are the car keys?” I’d ask.

“Gone!” would come the answer, with a delighted beaming smile.

“Yes, I know they’ve gone” I’d say. “Where have they gone?”

“Gone!” she’d say again, even more pleased with herself.

Much the same thing seems to be happening at my parents’ house of late.  As I had a bit of time on my hands, I thought I’d have a shave, an event that generally only happens about once a week. This process requires a razor (check), lather and brush (check, check), a supply of hot water, a basin to catch it in and a plug to retain it (check, check…) “Erm, where’s the plug?”

“I think it’s gone” says Mr E.

I stop myself from the same follow-up question I asked my daughter 20 years ago, knowing it’s unfair to ask – his condition in its current state completely prevents any form of coherent answer, and would probably only add further confusion and unnecessary stress. I’ll go out and buy a multi-pack of plugs in the morning, remaining bewhiskered in the meantime.

After that, I decided we’d go out for the day. The newspapers – two broadsheets, so quite a pile – were undoubtedly in the house when we left. When we got back I went out to mow the lawn, leaving Mr E on the sofa, with the cat, his feet up – and, I know for categorical certainty, with today’s papers.

He didn’t stay there long, pottering out to see what I was doing fairly shortly afterwards – and in that moment, the papers, which I was thinking I might look at this evening, upped and vanished. I’ve looked in the obvious places – the recycling, the waste paper baskets. Mr E is just as nonplussed. Humouring his well-meant suggestions I can confirm they’re not in the airing cupboard, his underwear drawer or the oven either.

“Gone!” as GD1 would have said, with glee.

I’ve given Mr E yesterday’s papers to look through again, one glimmer of advantage to his advancing Alzheimer’s being that he hasn’t noticed. In the meantime, if anyone still has copies of Wednesday’s Times and Telegraph, would you mind if I borrowed them? Thanks in advance.

So what makes a good subject for a play?

A historical footnote? (Emilia, Our Country’s Good). A major bit of history? (Six the Musical, Henry V, The Madness of George III).

Or what about murder? (Macbeth, Thrill Me: the Leopold and Loeb Story). Then there’s old age (King Lear, The Seagull). And familial dysfunctionality permeates almost everything from Death of a Salesman and The Glass Menagerie to The Taming of the Shrew and Ghosts.

Sometimes play topics are really quirky. David Haig’s wonderful play Pressure is, among other things about a weather forecast. And Mary’s Babies by  Maud Dromgoole is about the troubled and brave new world of not knowing who your siblings are if you owe your origins to sperm donation.

The field, of course, is wide open. Witness some of the entertainingly whacky things which get to Edinburgh or The Vaults. I wouldn’t, for instance have missed for anything Natasha Sutton Williams‘s one woman show Freud the Musical with its hilariously outrageous, outspoken songs which I saw last year. And I admire the originality of anyone who can spot a subject with legs, however unlikely.

But there’s no copyright in ideas so it probably makes sense to keep it under wraps when, you’re successful and a good one strikes you. I interviewed David Haig recently for Sardines magazine. He tells me he’s under commission to Bridge Theatre for a new play – probably in 2020 – and that the first draft has gone down well. He said cagily: “I think it’s quite a good idea so I don’t think I’d better say any more about it at present.”

Meanwhile I often think about play writing myself. Since I began professional writing nearly 30 years ago I joke that I have churned out (sorry – written) the equivalent of War and Peace every year. And much of that, for various reasons, has been focused on performing arts, drama and theatre. A logical progression occurs to me.  Should I now write a play?

Part of me is so utterly humbled by the fine quality of much of the work that I see that I feel I couldn’t possibly contribute to this genre. On the other hand I have IDEAS and things which permeate my life: my experience of living with Alzheimer’s might make a workable three hander, for instance. That’s the Alzheimer’s victim, the carer and someone to play everyone else. Could I make it work?

Then there’s my teaching memoir Please Miss We’re Boys which is due out in paperback this summer. It tells the story of my first five years in teaching – 1960s Deptford which was never short of drama. In my more positive moments I think it would make a good 60 minute for theatre or TV but whether or not I’m the person to dramatise it is another matter.

I heard some rivetingly good monologues at Chickenshed a few weeks ago. Perhaps, I thought, as I travelled home across London from Cockfosters, I should have a go at working some of my material into a monologue or two? Would that be a better place to start?

Then I go and see another impressively well written show and my confidence sags. Again. When I first wrote fairly regular columns for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Independent and Daily Mail back in the 1990s I didn’t let the fact that other very well established people were already there put me off.  Somehow play writing seems different.

For a start you need dramatic talent, flair and an ear for dialogue as well as ideas and a good vocabulary. And I’m still not sure. But, as always its probably a case of nothing ventured nothing gained. Perhaps later this year …

If life with Ms Alzheimer’s is a “journey” then every week seems to bring a new staging post on the road downhill.  My Loved One now seems to be a compulsive mover of bits and pieces around the house for no reason. I suppose it relates to some distant, foggy memory of tidying up but it’s jolly irritating to live with.

The well fitting, good quality upstairs bathroom basin plug went AWOL weeks ago. The several cheap and nasty replacements I have bought are uselessly leaky so now it’s impossible to run and retain a basin of water. I try not to curse. I really do.

Then there was the birthday card I carefully bought for my great niece this week. I put it with a stamp at the top of the stairs ready to take down and write later – it disappeared. As did the towel from the downstairs loo which I eventually found quite by chance neatly folded in the umbrella box on the shelf in the coat cupboard in the hall. Newspapers are frequently folded up and put in funny places – usually before I’ve read them – and I seem to spend several minutes every day hunting for the Marmite which could be anywhere. One evening last week in the hour  between the carer leaving and my getting home from a review job all the sitting room coasters were carried up to our bedroom. I recently found his toothbrush wrapped in a clean face flannel and put in a drawer and so it goes on.

I’m aware of course that this is a classic Alzheimer’s symptom. My best friend’s mother used to drive her daughter potty by hiding things such as keys around the house – or worse – throwing then away in my friend’s absence.  Another friend has now removed all her mum’s jewellery because she’s so afraid it will get hidden and or lost. Years ago we laughed (sorry – I wouldn’t think it remotely funny now) when a distant elderly relation died and her family found stashes of quite large sums of money hidden in unlikely places all over the house.

The trouble is that you can’t reason with them and that’s hard to deal with when until relatively recently you could have a sensible, grown up conversation. I am constantly (and tetchily) saying. “Look, if I put something down in a certain place there is a reason for it. If you don’t understand the reason, don’t worry about it. JUST LEAVE THINGS ALONE, PLEASE” At brighter moments he understands this. Sometimes he even laughs at his own eccentricities but within minutes he will have forgotten –  and be at it again.

And of course, I’m not the kindest or most patient of carers however hard I try. In practice it means I allow him do less and less. It’s more convenient to do everything myself in the first place than to have to sort out his muddles. Yes, I know that flies in the face of the recommended way to deal with Alzheimer’s patients but I’m me and there it is.

MLO is very restless these days and likes to struggle up from the table and try to carry things into the kitchen – typically before I’ve finished eating so I find myself barking: “Leave that please. I’ll do it when I’m ready.” And the problem is compounded by his quite often “seeing things” which is another classic symptom. He’ll mistake a pair of shoes on the floor for an animal, for instance, or if I ask him to walk out of the bathroom door he sees/imagines a door at the other end of the very small space and heads in the wrong direction.  And sometimes it’s surreally, harmlessly hilarious. Younger son, in charge for a few hours last weekend, reports that when he gave MLO a ginger biscuit, the latter wanted to put a battery in it.

When people casually commiserate with all this my usual response is to throw it off lightly by saying. “Oh well, it’s just the shit life throws at you”. Lately that has become a bit .. err … literal. A heartfelt thank you to whoever invented  disposable latex gloves.

And now, here comes the upbeat bit: By the time this posts, and you read it, I shall have escaped, very thankfully, to rural North Yorkshire for three nights leaving Elder Son in charge at home. The lovely friend I’m going to stay with is very good at “respite” and I shall be allowed to sleep all night, not to have to wash and dress anyone other than myself and to have proper chats with someone who answers properly rather than ricocheting between non-sequiturs. No one will hide the basin plug either.

 

Everyone I speak to at the moment wants to talk about diversity.

This week, Matthew Xia, in a very congenial, relaxed interview, told me about his passion for democratic art and how he wants to break down the power structures which prevent it. “When I walk down Piccadilly in Manchester the whole world is there” he says. “It’s very diverse indeed. Then you step inside the Royal Exchange and suddenly it’s a different, white, middle class world which simply doesn’t reflect its environment”.

Wind the clock back a few days to another café and another pot of tea and, in another pleasant interview, Roy Williams is lamenting first, the lack of black theatre companies compared with when he started out and second, the dearth of well known black playwrights. I point out that he’s the one everyone thinks of and he says ruefully: “But it shouldn’t be like that.  I know lots of very good black playwrights but they’re not getting the commissions and opportunities”

Xia thinks there’ll be no real change until we see more BAME people at the top, making decisions and, like everyone I’ve spoken to this year he is dismissive of the National Theatre which he regards as less than national.

Two things occur to me. First, things are improving but change takes time. Daniel Evans, Artistic Director at Chichester, told me last month that he’s delighted to have achieved 35% BAME casting this year – and that in a place like Chichester which doesn’t have the ethnic diversity that big cities such as Manchester and London do.  Bravo but it all has to be balanced against the bottoms-on-seats issue. First and foremost a theatre has to sell tickets. It’s a business. And that means you have to manage your core audience carefully which might involve not making too many changes too quickly. I addressed that issue in one of these blogs a few months ago and was shrilly accused of racism and failure to understand theatre among other things  – absurd, as anyone who knows me or who took the trouble to read what I had actually written, knows.

Second, what do we mean by diversity? Xia and Williams were both talking about race – skin colour even –  just as many others in the industry do. But there’s much more to it than that. Diversity is a diverse issue.

There’s the whole issue of women, for a start. Well go and see Six the Musical at the Arts and then walk down to the Strand to see Emilia and Waitress and tell me that change isn’t afoot. It’s all brilliant stuff which really kicks the patriarchy into the gutter. And note that almost every Shakespeare play now staged by anyone, anywhere has women playing traditional men’s roles, sometimes adapted and sometimes not – from Glenda Jackson currently doing another production of King Lear on Broadway all the way to Fourth Monkey training company whose predominantly female Henry V (including title role) I admired last month.

Relaxed performances are an excellent development too – a way of getting people of all ages with a whole range of special needs to theatres to enjoy shows in an inclusive way. Look, moreover, at how theatres, prompted by disability legislation, have improved access for wheelchair users and laid on hearing loops, audio description, signed performances and the like in recent years. And how welcome it is to see people on stage with impairments doing a fine job along with the rest of the cast. Are they cast for their talent? Too right they are. All of it would have been unthinkable even a generation or two ago.

And even if we come back to race we do well to remember that racial difference is not necessarily visible. Daniel Evans tells me that there are so many Polish people in Chichester that last year that they captioned one of the Christmas show performances in Polish and it was a huge success.

Making theatre as diverse as possible is, I think, a work in progress. And progress is the operative word. I’m not advocating complacency. Of course there’s still much to be done but don’t let’s belittle the enormous amount which has already happened.

Photograph Roy Williams (BBC)

Marlowe Theatre Canterbury and touring

This production has been around for 24 years since 1995 so – seeing it now for the first time – I’m a bit late to the lakeside, as it were. But good things keep and this show is very good indeed: spellbinding, in every sense.

Bourne and his colleagues have reworked the story so that we’re in a very twitchy modern royal family complete with mechanical, floor clicking corgi (a lovely touch) and plenty of angst. The prince, who is gay but under pressure not to be, (James Lovell, Liam Mower or Dominic North) visits a lakeside in despair and sees swans who thereafter permeate and dance through his sometimes troubled, sometimes joyful dreams.

All the swans are men – muscular and very cygnine. They behave and move like animals and it’s deeply compelling to watch and listen to as they their bare feet slap rhythmically on the ground as if webbed and their unison hisses and growls punctuate the music with percussive accuracy. They are attractive but also wild, sinister and menacing with the lead swan (Will Bozier or Max Westwell) with whom the prince falls in love packing oodles of dark mystery. The Dance of the Little Swans is a playful delight with much infantile jostling and silliness.  And the split level ending – complete with that show stopper key change – presents the dichotomy perfectly.

The choreography, which is splendidly original, is the real star of this show. Every movement matches the music, from some amusing teeth cleaning and deodorant application at the beginning to a strange, passionate leap in which the prince more than once curls himself entirely round the hips of swan who holds and spins him foetus-like in defiance of gravity. This production is about as far from the world of tutus and en pointe as it could be with steps and ideas borrowed from many other dance genres including street and hip-hop seamlessly grafted into traditional ballet. Even the costumes are part of the choreography as the black and white elements move against each other, for example, in the livery of the servants at the beginning.

Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures company uses pre-recorded music and although I love to see an orchestra it works well here. The Swan Lake Orchestra recorded the score at Air Studios in 2004 with Brett Morris conducting and I like the way he, and the sound engineers, bring out all Tchaikovsky’s magnificent orchestral detail and colour which underpins every movement on stage, however tiny.

It is, in short, a masterpiece. I’m so glad it’s touring yet again giving more people, like me, the opportunity to see it for the first time and old hands the chance to revisit it in admiration.

First published by Lark Reviews: http://www.larkreviews.co.uk/?cat=3

Emilia – ★★★★★
By Morgan Lloyd Malcolm. Presented by Eleanor Lloyd, Kate Pakenham, Nica Burns and Eilene Davidson.
performance date: 08 Mar 2019
venue: Vaudeville Theatre, London

★★★★★

This magnificent show fizzes with originality, ideas, passion and topicality. And by the time you reach the riveting, angry, final speech the whole audience is palpably (and appropriately) on fire.

Emilia Bassano (1569-1645) was a talented, committed and published writer but is remembered only as the possible “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Morgan Lloyd Morgan’s sparkling, all female plays seeks to give her a very feisty voice of her own and to use her story to explore the sidelining of women in general. And it’s deftly done under Nicole Charles’s direction with spirited, evocative ensemble work, talented actor musicians playing two flutes and cello and three actors playing Emilia at different stages of her long life.

In places the lack of equivocation in Morgan’s script makes you gasp in admiration and it’s often very funny. One of the play’s contentions is that Emilia’s words and ideas were often noted and “recycled” by her lover, Shakespeare. Thus the text frequently dances in and out of snippets from the plays and sonnets. Clever stuff – woven into patches of deliciously incongruous modern dialogue including references to, for example, radar. Yes, the thoughts are timeless.

Clare Perkins is splendidly controlled as Emila 3, the oldest of the trio. She is onstage much of the time as a quasi narrator but the play begins and ends with her and she hits you straight between the eyes. Saffron Coomber is strong as the youngest Emilia, already determined not to be walked over and Adelle Leonce is moving as the middle one.

But really it’s the ensemble – cast diversely in every sense – which drives the piece so effectively. They sing and croon. The movement work is vibrant and there are some terrific scenes featuring a group of washer women from “south of the river”.

This exciting play was commissioned by Michelle Terry for Shakespeare’s Globe last summer. It has now transferred into the West End but there are enough Bankside and Globe references to ensure that you never forget its origins.
First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Emilia%20-%20%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85%E2%98%85&reviewsID=3533
 
 
Rhetoric
Devised and performed by Drama Studio London third year graduating students
performance date: 28 Mar 2019
venue: Drama Studio London, Grange Court, Ealing
 

This piece, devised and performed by eleven Drama Studio London third year graduating students, is part of a season of three different devised shows running in its on site theatre this week. Partly a way of showcasing student work at all levels, Rhetoric is angry, funny, nicely observed and includes some interesting acting.

It works, rather cleverly, as a triptych, The first and middle scenes seem to be unrelated until we reach the very end when all becomes clear. Emmet Tams, who also directs, scripted the piece and he’s done a good job. Mary has dementia and is in a care home where she listens to the radio incessantly. An incident means that she now has to transfer to somewhere able to “better provide for her needs”. So the theme is displacement. The longer central scene gives us a radio show, hosted streamed visually on Amazon for the first time – with a very heated, Brexit-related sofa discussion about refugees.

There’s an impressive performance from Devarnie Lothian as Mary’s gentle, caring, knowledgeable social worker. Like Elizabeth Bell’s role as nurse with who he has some very convincing naturalist it dialogue, his character is one of the few who isn’t a stereotype. Lothian’s acting is invisible – a very pleasing performance. And I loved his very last line: “Come on, Mary. Let’s take back control.”

James Hoyle is very strong as the celebrity radio show host too. The mannerisms, vanity and professionalism to hide vulnerability is accurately observed. I liked Oliver Lintott as the voice of reason (from Russia – just to confound expectations too )in the radio studio against the right wing bigotry of two of the others, Jaimie Bremner is chilling as the Farage-like condemnatory George and Eleanor Shannon makes a nice job of the extreme tabloid columnist in her pearls and chignon.

It’s an enjoyably intelligent 75 minutes of theatre and I hope we see more of these students as they begin to work professionally in the next few months.

First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-Drama%20Studio%20London%20(student%20productions)-Rhetoric&reviewsID=3531
Mary’s Babies – ★★
By Maud Dromgoole. Co-produced between Jermyn Street Theatre & Oak Theatre
performance date: 20 Mar 2019
venue: Jermyn Street Theatre, 16b Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6ST
 

LR: Mary’s Babies at Jermyn Street Theatre – Katy Stephens and Emma Fielding. Photo: Robert Workman

★★

A child born via sperm donation is likely to have unknown half siblings and that’s the interesting topic which Maud Dromgoole’s 90-minute two-hander explores from a range of angles. Set in 2007, the play is based on the true story of fertility treatment pioneers, Mary Barton and her husband Betold Wiesner with whose sperm they impregnated up to a thousand women before destroying the evidence. And it uses many individual stories. Most people have a natural yearning to learn about their own origins and to meet people to whom they are genetically related.

All the roles are played by Emma Fielding and Katy Stephens both of whom are wonderfully naturalistic, versatile actors although Stephens fails to convince as a man especially in the opening monologue. The casting makes sense – in a sense – given that the many characters depicted are supposed to be related to each other including one married couple who, horrifyingly, turn out to be brother and sister. In another case two people discover that they are twins separated at birth.

Sadly though, the play is flawed. The short scene format and the constant role switching is messily confusing with insufficient distinction between characters so that the story telling is far from clear. Anna Reid’s rather attractively plain set includes framed names which light up on the burgundy wall behind the action to tell the audience which pair of characters they’re watching. It’s a clumsy device which doesn’t actually help much because it’s a fast paced piece and some of the episodes are so short that you’ve barely clocked who Fielding and Stephens meant to be before they’ve morphed into someone else. There’s also a gratuitous, rather grating scene with a ventriloquist’s puppet which doesn’t work theatrically or narratively.

Dromgoole’s script, however, is very funny in places as well as full of sound observations. I love the idea of someone being “still chemically enraged” after an upset and “no legacy is a rich as honesty” is a fine line.

LR: Mary’s Babies at Jermyn Street Theatre – Emma Fielding and Katy Stephens. Photo: Robert Workman
 First published by Sardines: http://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-West%20End%20&%20Fringe-Mary%27s%20Babies%20-%20%E2%98%85%E2%98%85&reviewsID=3520