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Dementia the Musical

The Studio, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

Growing old gracefully isn’t easy these days. Once you reach that difficult age you are either patronised or else shunted out of the way in the name of care. Some people, however, simply refuse to kowtow to the system they have no say in legislating. 

 

This is the case for James, Agnes and Nancy, Dementia the Musical’s unrelenting trio who are beamed down into a world of bureaucratic regimes and high backed armchairs that are unlikely to have graced their own homes if they were still allowed to live in them. 

 

What follows sees James, Agnes and Nancy put on trial for being dementia activists by the tellingly named Rigid System. As played by Pauline Lockhart, Ms System is a lady not for turning. James, Agnes and Nancy, meanwhile, have their own stories to tell beyond the TV news reports beamed out between each of their testimonies. 

 

It is these stories that count in Lewis based poet Ron Coleman’s play, brought to life by director Magdalena Schamberger in a mix of agit-prop, Kafkaesque absurdism and a jazzy set of songs by Sophie Bancroft that reveal each character’s inner lives.

 

One is reminded at moments of Black Daisies for the Bride, Peter Symes’ care home set 1993 drama-documentary that saw poet Tony Harrison and composer Dominic Muldowney similarly put dementia sufferers lives to music. Here, however, things have a more political intent. 

 

Drawn from the experiences of the real James, Agnes and Nancy, and with musical input from Andrew Eaton-Lewis, these are delivered from the dock by Ross Allan, Kirsty Malone and Fiona Wood with a mix of music theatre pizzazz and polemical intent. The dock itself is ingeniously represented in Karen Tennent’s design by a Zimmer frame. 

 

Lockhart’s Rigid System is a creation that falls somewhere between a Spitting Image Margaret Thatcher and Cruella De Vil, while Willy Gilder becomes a prime time Greek chorus as the on screen reporter. As the play’s final sequence so movingly shows, the real James, Agnes and Nancy are still going strong, and still fighting for the right to live on their own terms. 


The Herald, October 14th 2024


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