TThis is the story of an elderly, deaf man with dementia who enters a hospice to spend his final days. Not much happens on the outside. Ramesh Meyyappan’s astonishing play builds its power on the drama of this man’s inner turmoil, with memories colliding with reality and hallucinations invading his everyday life.
The film plays out like a thriller, with Harry (Meyyappan) playing the role of the existential detective trying to piece together the story of his life, from the death of his wife (Amy Kennedy) to her repeated appearances, which seem like disturbing yet tantalizing puzzle pieces.
Meyyappan, a Singaporean deaf writer and actress living in Glasgow, conveys the distress of living with dementia, especially when you are deaf and your only caregiver (Elicia Daly) cannot use BSL. He brings a wonderfully subtle kind of physical theatre to his performance, so you can see every ounce of his fear and frustration.
Performed as part of the Made in Scotland show, brilliantly directed by Matthew Lenton, the play depicts the beguiling fantasies that draw Harry into his lost past and the thunderous shock when they melt away.
This is achieved in part by a mirror onstage (set design by Becky Minto), which represents the distorted or unreliable visions that dementia can bring, and which also burdens us, the audience, by reflecting our images back to us.
It becomes a metaphor for how Harry is removed from himself, as if he’s seeing his life through a pane of glass, but a parallel world emerges on the other side too. The visual hallucinations of Harry’s wife are both romantic and creepy, and there are eerie visual effects surrounding the appearance of the younger Harry (Rinkoo Barpaga) as the older man stands shaken and angry at this unrecognizable version of himself.
Harry’s room is sparsely furnished, with a table, an armchair and a tower of pebbles that evoke fond memories, and he clings to them as if they were solid, tangible pieces of the past. A piano score and an electrifying, eerie soundscape (music composed by David Paul Jones) convey the emotions of his illness.
There are no subtitles for the signs on stage, which is a clever way of putting the hearing audience in Harry’s shoes: we cannot understand this language and can only guess what is being said or watch in confusion. A play about love, death and communication that is not easy to watch, but incredibly moving.
