http://www.edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/festivals/fringe/Show+Pieces/5217492/story.html
Pieces
Review by Iain Ilich
4.5 stars out of 5
Stage 6, Catalyst Theatre
The descent into dementia isn’t a light topic.
Every day, dutiful daughter Diane makes the trek to the care home where her mother, Joan, has recently moved. Dementia has stripped Joan of much of her memory and of her ability to communicate in a way that makes sense to anyone but herself. She can no longer identify her visiting daughter. She holds onto and cherishes pictures as if they were people. She is sad and lonely and terrified.
The story is a collection of little fragments of memory woven together with Diane’s narration. We learn more about Ben, Joan’s beloved late husband whose death Joan is no longer aware of. We travel back to Joan’s childhood misadventures, cut into tiny fragments of thought expressed in half-formed sentences and emotional outbursts. Diane even learns things about her mother, and her mother’s impression of her, that she never knew before.
But the real highlight here is the brilliant use of the stage to allow multiple scenes to take place at the same time, linked by shared phrases. On one half of the stage, the present is played out with daughter visiting mother in a care facility. On the other half, actors play fragments of memory that dart through Joan’s head. It’s like a living footnote that explains and provides context to the action in the present. It sounds complicated, but it works perfectly. It captures the confusion of the person in the present with the lucidity of the thoughts before they’re filtered through dementia.
It’s a sad, moving play at a festival where comedies sell tickets. It deserves to be seen.
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