Christine Mary Dunford adapted the 2007 best-selling novel by Lisa Genova Still Alice in 2013, a year prior to the 2014 film adaptation that won actor Julianne Moore an Oscar. Dunford originally wrote and directed the first production in Chicago and it is her adaptation that is used for this 2018 production, directed by David Grindley. It is an American play with American language, characters and setting about a menopausal, respected Harvard University professor, Alice (Sharon Small) experiencing symptoms of young (early-onset [UK]) Alzheimer’s at the age of 50. There’s a lot of dates in there and it doesn’t take an academic professor to work out that the story of this play is at least eleven years old. It is also the third well-researched play on the theme of this prevalent Alzheimer’s disease affecting 850,000 people in the UK, and rising, that I have seen in the last two months. People care about the subject and want to understand more. Writer Genova has a Harvard PhD in Neuroscience that translates into Dunford’s somewhat step process, clinical adaptation as we examine a three-year period in the progress of the disease in Alice.
Johnathan Fensom’s set design is made to represent a home with a cluttered kitchen dominated by a huge American fridge-freezer and a microwave (used to tell the time). Defined sitting and dining areas are picked out by lighting designed by Jason Taylor. The play is from Alice’s perspective as an exceptionally bright working woman, wife and mother of two adult children. Her inner conscious, ‘herself’ (Eva Pope) is always on stage with Alice. Herself opens the play reciting the clinical definition of Alzheimer’s which fixes the subject matter to hand, while a huge back wall screen projection displays the month and year. This simple tool provides a useful time frame as we follow the story from 2015 to present day. Pope achieves Herself with a nuanced understated performance where a glance or emotion replaces dialogue with great effect. Not that Herself is silent. In fact, Alice cannot shake her off as Herself is ever present, always watching and (watching out for her) as she desperately clings to her diminishing self, a woman who could previously clinically break-down and define the disease with ease. This inner conscious is both helpful and confusing as a younger and more knowing version of Alice, seen only by Alice, guides her and the audience through the ever-growing challenges of memory loss and accompanying anxiety that leads Alice to say, ‘I miss myself’. The anxiety is at one of its highest points when her husband and a doctor talk about Alice’s treatment as though she is not there providing a poignant moment when Herself stands and hugs Alice. Herself encourages Alice to write things down as a memory aid but can only watch as family relationships with her husband John (Martin Marquez), son Thomas (Mark Armstrong) and daughter Lydia (Ruth Ollman) unfold and alter with the onset of the disease.
Grindley captures the family dynamic with this worthy cast exceptionally well with a particularly lovely performance from Ollman as Lydia. Never forced, the relationship between mother and daughter is realistically achieved. There is also a beautifully constructed stand-off between brother and sister, over the care of their mother, where Armstrong fully brings his character to life. As bits of Fensom’s set are rolled around and then gradually removed, Alice’s cluttered mind unravels until the final uncluttered scene strips everything to a bare minimum. Small brings a fully-focused audience (you could feel the tension in the theatre) on her journey from international speaker to living in the moment with an admirable, highly believable performance but my sympathies rest with supportive husband John who never quite lived up to his wife’s brilliance. Marquez made the most of his largely underwritten role as he comes to terms with his untimely opportunity for academic stardom in a life far different from the one planned.
The aim of the original Still Alice was to raise awareness which has largely been achieved but however poignant in places the story takes us, with constant new research, treatment and data to draw on, it’s all a bit dated and clinical. The ninety minute without-a-break performance makes for a short evening for such a large subject that people with no knowledge of Alzheimer’s may find interesting but only touches on the absolute horror of this insidious illness.
Reviewer - Barbara Sherlockon - 6/11/18
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