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O! Let me not be mad

One of the hardest things I now have to deal with is My Loved One’s delusions – yet another thing which people who haven’t had close experience of it don’t realise is, apparently, part of Alzheimer’s.

It is both disconcerting and oddly isolating when someone you’ve known for over five sixths of your life and lived with for nearly fifty years starts burbling nonsense.

I first noticed it last year on the way home from a holiday in Malaysia when, in the middle of the night about seven hours into the twelve hour flight, I was informed that the aircraft hadn’t left the ground and that the airline staff were “messing about”. Incredulously I showed MLO the flight map and told him we were over Russia at 35,000 feet but he wasn’t having it. “You’ve got more faith in British Airways than I have” he spat contemptuously. It took me a long time to convince him.

Does altitude, cabin pressure and so on affect an Alzheimer’s-polluted brain more than it impacts on the rest of us? Who knows. We’re going to Washington DC in September on the grounds that MLO has said he’d like to go back there and I think, in that case, that we’d better do it while we can. I’m apprehensive about what effect the flight might have, though, and am planning to book airport and airline support in case I find myself with a serious delusional problem on my hands.

But perhaps it’s nothing to do with flying. Back home he told me in the small hours after he’d popped out to the loo one night that he couldn’t turn off the bathroom light because “there are people in there”. Then there was the day, a couple of weeks ago, when he phoned me while I was out working to tell me, because he thought I should know straightaway that “Someone has had a baby”. He seemed to think that he had to take charge of said infant. Blimey! Dealing with something like that on the phone from a distance sent shivers though me. “No” I said, taking a silent deep breath and speaking with the assertive clarity and simplicity I used to use for students with learning difficulties. “No one we know is having a baby. I think you’re in one of your muddles. Did you nod off? Have you been dreaming?” After a lot of humming, hawing and broken-off sentences he finally acknowledged that I was probably right.

I think incidents like these are mostly related to dreaming. With hindsight he’d probably been asleep on that flight from KL too. If you or I have a dream we surface, think “That was a bit weird” and get on with our day. It no longer seems to work like that once Ms Alzheimer’s is towering over you.  MLO sleeps, dreams, wakes and then can’t separate the dream from real life. It’s as if his fuddled brain is blurring the boundaries although once he’s fully awake, and I’ve talked to him, he will usually admit that he’s “being silly”. And in a way that’s worse because the realisation is inclined to upset him and goodness knows I can understand why. It must be a dreadful feeling.

At present MLO, poor man, is desperately anxious about the forthcoming surgery to remove the now revoltingly prominent cancerous lesion on his face. He seems to be terrified both of the surgery itself – although he’s been repeatedly reassured that it’s a pretty straightforward, minor procedure – and, understandably, of the possible outcome. “Cancer” remains a very emotive word.

Because he’s so worried he seems to dream about it nightly with the result that he wakes up almost every morning convinced that the surgery is happening that day. One morning last week, for example he opened his eyes and said “Now what?” I patiently suggested that we get dressed and have breakfast as usual. “Isn’t it today I’m going to the hospital?” he asked. On the day that I’m drafting this blog he actually got dressed very early. When I asked why he said he had to be ready to go to the hospital. It now seems to be a daily delusion. It’s like a very young child who hasn’t quite sorted out time and keeps asking whether it’s, say, Christmas yet except that in this case it’s driven by dread rather than eager anticipation. The surgery appointment is 10 July. Thank goodness this particular problem should ease then.

I expect some other dream or delusion will replace it, though. I suppose this is what people mean when they talk about patients with dementia being “confused”. In a bygone, less euphemistic, age they would have called it madness. King Lear suddenly seems very relevant.

 

Brush up your Shakespeare? Well yes, Cole Porter, I had plenty of chances to do just that last week when I attended Shakespeare performances on three consecutive evenings: The Winter’s Tale at The Globe on Wednesday, Richard III courtesy of Shakespeare at the George in Huntingdon on Thursday and Ring of Envy aka Othello at Inter-mission Theatre in Knightsbridge on Friday.

I remember, a few years ago, telling someone remote from the performing arts industries that I review a lot of theatre. “Oh” he said, ferreting about for something appropriate to say. “Do you ever see any Shakespeare? I saw a play of his once”. I had to pitch my answer carefully to avoid being unintentionally rude. I thought about that man again as I worked through last week and wondered what he’s make of it.

The interesting thing, for me, about seeing three diametrically different takes on Shakespeare within 72 hours is that it serves as a ringing reminder of the versatility of the material. He really can be made to work for everyone – because I sat in three very different sorts of audiences too.

I didn’t actually like Blanche Macintyre’s understated The Winter’s Tale which featured, I thought, some pretty weak acting, alongside good performances, and became rather wordy and tedious. Several  critics (including Dominic Maxwell in The Times) agreed with me although others admired it and the audience at the time seemed pretty taken with it.  The Globe of course attracts a mixed audience – including theatre buffs, tourists, students and I was amused to see a couple in their 30s amongst the groundlings with a tiny baby in a front sling. You can’t start too young, as the RSC often reminds us.

Shakespeare at the George is, of course, a different kettle of fish. It’s an amateur company – established for 60 years, recalled in fondness by many pros who once cut a few teeth there and well respected locally. I’ve seen maybe 10 of their shows in recent years but I think Richard III, directed by Lynne Livingstone is probably the best yet. She and her company have found a commendable Gregory Doran-esque knack of making the verse sound new-minted so that the story telling never flags. It features several strong actors too which is even more of a feat when you remember that most of them also have completely unrelated day jobs. Who are the audience? Local people of all ages, theatre lovers, Shakespeare buffs along with friends and family of the cast who come from far and wide. SATG has a significant follower base of people who come to the shows regularly too.

And so to Inter-mission theatre and their version of Othello, in many ways the most interesting of the three evenings. The cast for Ring of Envy is a mixture of current Inter-mission youth theatre (IYT) members and former members many of whom are now working professionally. IYT is a arts-based youth mentoring programme which works with 16-25 year olds from all across London. Some are ex-offenders or at risk of offending. The inspiring Darren Raymond, himself an ex-offender who discovered Shakespeare while he was in prison, is a working actor as well as IYT artistic director and writer/director of the plays which develop from workshops with the young people. It’s not just a “worthy” venture. The standard of acting is very high. Ring of Envy is fine, moving, impeccably acted theatre and I had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

And as for the audience? Lots of actors and directors (and I suspect an agent or two), friends and family including the four year old daughter of the actor playing Emilia along with Mark Rylance who’s a patron and is about to play Iago at The Globe – and lots of others  Another gloriously mixed bunch.

QED. Shakespeare really is a everyone’s playwright. He can – if allowed to –  speak to every man, woman and child irrespective of background, class, education, race, gender or anything else. It’s good to be reminded of that occasionally.

I adapted surprisingly quickly to saying firmly “My husband has Alzheimer’s” to anyone who needs to know – and that’s most people we come into contact with. It’s taken me much longer to get used to the predictable – actually quite funny in a rueful kind of way – reactions I get, particularly if My Loved One is not there.

To be clear and fair: everyone I’ve had such a conversation with has been kind and sympathetic. People are extraordinarily decent and I’m often deeply touched by just how caring almost everybody is, ranging from close friends and family to casual acquaintances.

It’s just the way many of them go about expressing their solidarity which makes me giggle. They mean so well and they have no idea that they are conforming to a well worn pattern. First they look me in the eye, squeeze my arm or hand and murmur something warm and heartfelt about how sorry they are. Then, after a pause they say: “And I know what it’s like. My granny/uncle/mother/ grandfather/aunt/father (substitute as appropriate) had Alzheimer’s”.

“Yes, it’s in every family. Just the shit life throws at you” is my stock response as I try to keep it light. But I know what’s coming. My comment triggers an enthusiastic nod before the person I’m talking to launches headlong into a lengthy, often very detailed, account of just how ghastly it all was.

I then spend ten minutes or so hearing how Mum (or whoever) lived to be 102, not recognising anyone in her family for several years before she died. She became, moreover, hideously and uncharacteristically aggressive and had to go into a nursing home for her own protection and that of other people. Meanwhile she was also doubly incontinent for ten years … and so on and on.

I have heard dozens of these sad and appalling stories since we went public about our predicament and I started these blogs. I made that particular one up – it’s a composite but you get the gist.

Well, I suppose it’s beneficial for people to get such sadness off their chests even if it all happened a while ago. If, however, they think it helps me to hear about it then it doesn’t. It’s a bit like telling a young woman pregnant for the first time graphic scare stories about childbirth. You just don’t do it. (I hope).  I have schooled myself simply to rise above it when someone tells me an Alzheimer’s horror story. I just chuckle inwardly, look seriously at the speaker and think: “Here comes another one”. I find it funny because, obviously, not a single one of these lovely folk realises how stereotypically he or she is behaving.

The only way I can “manage” (sounds like running a corporation) what I have to deal with is by taking every day as it comes and refusing to think (much) about the future. I’m not in denial. Of course I know that once Ms Alzheimer’s has her fangs in you it’s a downward trajectory. There will be better days and bad days but the general trend is gradual deterioration. What good would it do me, MLO or anyone else to be getting stressed and worried because this time next year he might not be able to do some of the things he can do now – such as remain in the house alone for a few hours and prepare himself a simple meal which is what he is doing  as I draft this blog on my laptop in a coffee shop 50 miles from base?

I’m thankful too that MLO has never been a very imaginative man. It used to irritate me a bit but now it’s a bonus. I honestly don’t think he can visualise what might lie ahead and nobody, thank goodness, is regaling HIM with their graphic Alzheimer’s anecdotes. He’s vaguely frightened about the future but his fairly prosaic brain – not the bit that Ms Alzheimer’s is occupying – doesn’t seem to be filling in the details. Naturally he is anxious about the forthcoming surgery for the skin cancer on his face in a couple of weeks but I don’t get any sense of his dwelling on the rest of it much which can only be a good thing. The people he meets are gentle and tactful with him as well as admirably unpatronising – and I find that quite moving. Full marks, for instance, to the Lewisham Borough Council  Occupational Therapist who did his recent blue badge assessment and to the woman at HSBC who processed our activation of Lasting Power of Attorney last week.

But I don’t suppose anyone will stop bombarding me with the awful stories they dish up for me when MLO is absent. Good job I still have a healthy sense of humour really. As ever my glass is half full.

Last week I attended the 2018 Theatre Book Prize award ceremony. From a shortlist of five titles, Nicholas Hytner won with Balancing Acts  (published by Jonathan Cape) – and the ever-engaging Rory Kinnear was there to make the happy announcement.

It set me thinking about how books work in this industry. I’m a bookish person and it seems to me that books relating to theatre – as with any other industry, activity or subject – must be integral. They remain, surely, the ultimate source of detailed information and reflection. Google’s OK for a quick fact such as Lawrence Olivier’s dates or to find out who runs the King’s Head Theatre but for in depth stuff there is no substitute for a well written book, whether you read it digitally or in hard copy.

And yet there seems – I’m afraid –  to be dwindling interest. There weren’t, I’m sad to report, many under 50’s there to applaud Nick Hytner, the runners up and the judges last week for example. It was a well enough attended event but most attendees were, like me of … well let’s just call it the book focused generation.

For years I tried to persuade The Stage to let me write a regular books column but there was never enough interest from readers to make it a goer. In the end I did a books blog for them for a while but it didn’t last long because of the low number of hits. Now I do the occasional round up of new titles here on my own website but responses are pretty thin.

It’s a great pity because there are fabulous theatre books being published all the time. 60 of them, from which the short list of five was distilled, were submitted for the Theatre Book Prize – eclectic, beautiful, fascinating, quirky, academic, entertaining and informative in varying degrees.

I receive regular parcels of new performing arts books from excellent specialist publishers such as Nick Hern Books, Oberon, Methuen Drama, Aurora Metro, Routledge and the rest. And I do my best to publicise the most impressive titles. But it’s an uphill struggle.

The truth, I fear, is that theatre books don’t appeal very widely (although they are the backbone of drama school libraries, of course) unless they are biographies or autobiographies of A list actors that the public know and love.

Nick Hytner’s book is very compelling. How on earth do you make a monolith like the National Theatre work effectively and what does the Director actually do anyway? The book is full of insights, anecdotes and reflections and it’s very readable. I just hope that the publicity which this prize will help accrue to Balancing Acts will mean good sales. Like the other four titles on the shortlist – and the 55 which didn’t make the cut, many of which I have read – it deserves to be widely consumed by people both inside and outside the industry. Books have a place and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance

Betty Blue Eyes was performed by Trinity Laban Musical Theatre students at Stratford Circus, London.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Betty Blue Eyes is set in the post war austerity of 1947 at the time of Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to Prince Philip. Meat is severely rationed and people are pretty fed up. Then some local bigwigs secretly breed a pig named Betty for a party with pork… cue for some delightful music from George Stiles (don’t miss the reference to Crown Imperial and the moment when he weaves Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’ into the texture) and lots of fun trying to keep the whole piece in period.

The very best thing in this show is Rebecca d’Lacey as Joyce Chilvers (she alternates the role at other performances with Emily Harper), an upwardly mobile chiropodist’s wife …

Read the rest of this review in Musical Theatre Review: http://musicaltheatrereview.com/trinity-laban-conservatoire-of-music-and-dance-betty-blue-eyes/

The Watermill Ensemble, 16 June 2018

I must have seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream fifty times. And over the years that has taken in some pretty memorable Bottoms, including Desmond Barrit, Ian Talbot and Bernard Bresslaw among many others. Never, however, have I seen Bottom played with the exuberance, charisma and energy that Victoria Blunt brings to the role. She is variously gleeful, shy, sad, silly, sardonic, wondrous, knowing, rueful, childlike, sexy and she has fun with every single word. I especially liked the way she tumbles cheerfully into bed with Titania, does suggestive things with her ass’s head and flirts with audience members so that everyone in the room feels special. She has an engaging way of jumping – literally – into situations too. It’s a marvellous performance and I suspect I shall judge every Bottom I see in the future against it.

The whole production (ably directed by Paul Hart) is so thoughtfully colourful and original that it’s hard to stop smiling. My face was aching with delighted beaming at the end of the two hours that it runs. Eva Feiler’s Puck is like a naughty child playing with dolls and messing things up and she is terrific as terrified Snug The Joiner thrust, and shaking with stage fright, into his role as Lion. Tyrone Huntley, as Lysander (and ensemble parts) can convey as much with a grimace or grin as some other actors can only with a whole page of words. And anyone who saw him has Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar at Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park knows about his astonishingly expressive and very beautiful singing voice.

Although this isn’t a musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, most of this talented company are also on-stage musicians and there are several songs to complement Shakespeare.

Emma McDonald as Titania/Hippolyta for instance finds compelling queenly gravitas as the former even when she’s succumbing to her baser instincts with Bottom. She plays Hippolyta as a rather diffident Spaniard who twice runs off stage in anger at Theseus’s more dictatorially insensitive remarks. And she plays saxophone on stage just as Lillie Flynn who’s excellent as the really distraught Helena with hay fever also plays flute, guitar and sings beautifully.

All the action is often integrated with music created by the cast who also provide sound effects and mood. So good at it are they could probably make a reasonable living as a dance band. The moment when they all burst into Blue Moon is unforgettable.

The performance I saw was one of two in the run integrally signed in BSL by Lixi Chivas and Ana Becker. They become part of the cast on stage often being a sort of alter ego to a character, signing words and sharing roles. Sophie Stone, an impressively moving Hermia communicates partly in sign language and partly in words and when Huntley as Lysander wants to be intimate or private with her he signs too. It’s all very intelligent, sensitive and inclusive.

It is also one of the funniest Dreams I’ve seen in a while. I shall treasure the moment when an exasperated Oberon (Jamie Satterthwaite – good) has to help a very wimpish Puck down from the scaffolding or when Joey Hickman hilariously absurd as Flute the Bellows Mender (he also plays Demetrius) races back to the piano for the final ensemble number.

Photo: Scott Rylander

First published by Sardineshttp://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/reviews/review.php?REVIEW-The%20Watermill%20Ensemble%20(professional)-A%20Midsummer%20Night%27s%20Dream&reviewsID=3239

Thick black flaps

Ragged, jagged, tear about my head

Wrenching me apart.

I am blinded, deafened and made speechless

By the biting, clawing, dragging.

Worried, warm, loving fingers tenderly stroke my arm and face

Trying to comfort, to sooth.

In vain. I am elsewhere, swallowed whole by my pain.

I writhe.

I kick.

I try to fight the twisting and the torture.

To sleep or to die would be sweet release.

I am drowning in pain.

Far away, safe on the dry land of every day

The doctor’s voice: ‘An infection of the middle ear’.

 

Susan Elkin, 1991

 

John Steinbeck’s heart-wrenching novella Of Mice and Men (1937) must, in recent years, have become one of the most widely read stories in English. For decades it was a GCSE set text. I taught it to dozens of classes. That means millions of teenagers (and often their families) will have read it. There have also been some pretty impressive film and stage adaptations.

So we all remember how George and Lennie are migrant farm workers in 1930s California. Lennie has what would now carefully be called “learning difficulties”. George, often exasperated but  gruffly loving, is Lennie’s self appointed carer. The relationship is fraternal, complex and based on mutual dependence.

We’ll I’ve thought a lot about Of Mice and Men lately because I often feel I’m living it (without the Californian sunshine, unfortunately). Lennie’s problems – not understanding, willing to please and forever doing things he regrets because he doesn’t want to upset George – are very similar to the dementia which characterises worsening Alzheimer’s.

Lennie, unlike My Loved One, is on the one hand physically very powerful and on the other has a child-like love of stroking soft things. It is this combination which repeatedly leads him into serious trouble whereupon,childishly, he says often to George. “I’ve done a bad thing.”

MLO’s hideously similar new line is “I’ve done something silly” and when he says this my heart, like the fictional George’s, plummets. “OMG, now what?” I think. He’s trying, like a child who knows he’s in the wrong, to be open and honest with this mother figure I’ve reluctantly morphed into. The trouble is, he’s usually so anxious about whatever it is that he can’t explain what he’s done.

Recent “silly things” have included writing a cheque with an extra nought on it so that, for the first time ever, MLO’s cheque bounced. Fortunately it was only made payable to me and it’s all sorted now. His banking habits are stuck in 1962.  But not for much longer: I’m in the process of assuming control of his personal account. Then we shall fast forward to 2018 and it will all be online.

We had a classic “silly thing” instance last week when I was out working. I phoned home between jobs, as is my wont, to check that MLO was OK and to have a chat. It was a warm sunny day and, before leaving the house. I’d installed the umbrella on the patio table and wound it half up – enough to give him a bit of shade if he wanted to sit at the table for a while. He’s never liked strong sunlight and now that he has a large, growing squamous cell carcinoma on his face (due for incision next month) I think it’s sensible to be careful. The reason I hadn’t wound the umbrella any further was because one of my carefully nurtured and rather beautiful hanging baskets was in the way – because we’ve extended the patio and I need to rethink where things go.

Well, I expect you’ve guessed by now what happened. Yes, he tried to put the umbrella up fully and knocked down the hanging basket because he, his brain all twisted up by Ms Alzheimer’s, can no longer work out that if I’ve done something in a particular way then there must have been a good reason for it – best, therefore to leave it alone and not fiddle with it. Or to put that another way he now struggles with cause and effect. And I struggle with trying to imagine how it feels to live inside his confused head.

The conversation on the phone went something like this: Me: “Something silly? What’s happened?” Him: “It’s that pink thing outside” Me (cottoning on) “Do you mean the hanging basket? You didn’t fiddle with the umbrella did you?” Him: “It’s in the middle of the table.” Me: “Did you knock the hanging basket  down?” Him: “I think so” Me: “Is it damaged?” Him (voice beginning to crack) “I’m not sure”.  Me: “Well can’t you hang it up again? Him: “I thought of that but you know that round thing ..?” Me: You mean the hook?” And so on – and on.

In the end I took a deep breath, told myself (for the millionth time) that I have to keep things in proportion and said: “OK. I’ll look at it when I get home. And if you’ve damaged it badly, well It’s only a hanging basket. We’ll buy another one.” By then, the man at the next table in the coffee shop was giving me very sympathetic looks.

In the event, all I had to do was rehang the basket and remove a few trailing bits damaged by the whole thing falling to the ground. It’s a rather worrying indication of how things are and where they’re going that MLO couldn’t work out what was needed.

At the end of Of Mice and Men, George has to shoot Lennie to save him from a much worse fate. I rather hope it doesn’t come to that.

Steinbeck Centre, Salinas, California. I took this photograph in 2013.