A smart, sad, super-funny story
Family drama explores human fallout of early onset Alzheimer’s disease
Playwright Jill Daum’s therapist was so relieved that Daum’s new play, Forget About Tomorrow, got good reviews.
“She said if the reviews weren’t good she was going to call in sick,” said Daum, with a laugh as she shrugged her shoulders in a ‘this-ismy-life’ kind of way while sitting on a Vancouver-bound ferry recently.
To be fair, the therapist was just hoping for some good news to come Daum’s way as the last nine years of the Vancouverite’s life have been clouded by a series of gut punches. Topping the turmoil-inducing list is Daum’s husband of three decades, John Mann, is in the late stages of early onset Alzheimer’s and lives in a care home.
This blow came on the heels of the Spirit of the West frontman’s battle with colorectal cancer. Add on a series of ongoing health issues with another member of her family (Daum wants to keep this private) and you could easily forgive Daum if she curled up in a ball. But Daum has done the complete opposite, and instead, has stood up to the bad with a heart filled with good, and a determined demeanour.
“It’s not only how does she get up in the morning, but how does she present herself in such a positive, optimistic way?,” said Michael Shamata, director of Forget About Tomorrow.
Forget About Tomorrow opened at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre in late January. It’ll open in Vancouver at the Arts Club’s centre March 1. I saw it a couple of weeks ago at the Belfry and I went into it with the same feeling as Daum’s therapist. I really, really wanted it to be good. (Full disclosure: I know Daum and I’m in awe of Daum.)
I’m happy to say that this play about a couple who are dealing with the husband’s early onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis is a smart, sad and super-funny story about acceptance and love. Trust me, you will leave the theatre feeling better.
Daum, who is part of the successful Mom’s the Word theatre collective, began working on this play when her husband was first diagnosed five years ago at age 50. From the get-go, Mann was supportive of the idea and even wrote a couple of songs for the show. As it turned out, Forget to Forget and Tom’s Song are the last songs the award-winning songwriter ever penned.
Forget About Tomorrow is Daum’s first solo effort as a playwright and she admits that even after very positive responses to a pair of audience-attended readings of the play, she was still a nervous wreck leading up to its Belfry debut.
“I think you build a plane, then you wonder if it is going to take off,” said Daum. “It is so terrifying. I’m just so happy that it worked. The plane took off.”
The idea for the play first appeared when Daum was in a Wet Ink Collective Writing workshop in 2013.
“I just started to write about this everywoman,” said Daum about the character of Jane who is played perfectly by Jennifer Lines. “I was working in a bookstore so I put her in a store. My idea was every person, if you lift the lid on them, has an interesting story, but I just couldn’t escape the Alzheimer’s reality, so I started to secretly write about this woman who had in her life early onset. No one in the group knew that John had Alzheimer’s.
“Eventually I told them. It just ended up being this wonderful thing that I had this secret world that I could write about it, express it, talk about it without anybody actually knowing.”
The play begins with Tom (Craig Erickson) and Jane trying to figure out why Tom is struggling. Why he is so anxious and why his work (he’s a therapist) is suffering? In a bid to get a handle on things, he cuts back on patients, but that does little to make him feel better. In fact, it makes things worse. Jane notices and is frustrated by Tom’s odd and worsening behaviour.
As frustration mounts at home, Jane still has to go to work at the children’s bookstore. It’s here where most of the laughs come as Jane not only has to manage her husband, but she has to constantly massage the ego of her self-centred and hilarious boss, Lori (Colleen Wheeler). It’s here, at the bookstore, that Jane meets Wayne (Hrothgar Mathews). He comes in to buy a present, and then he comes in again and again and again.
They laugh, they flirt, they knock back some scotch — and then they have sex.
As you have probably figured out, this isn’t your grandparents’ Alzheimer story. Early onset has a whole other list of issues than what faces seniors struck by the disease.
“How are you supposed to take care of someone and work fulltime?,” asked Daum. “You go from two incomes to one. I just don’t feel people really grasp that aspect of it . ... And then the kids are still at a point that they need their dad still. They haven’t quite got to the point yet where they are self-sufficient. They are still so young to lose their dad and to see themselves in a caregiving role is tough.”
There are two kids in the play: University student Wynn (Aleita Northey) and budding musician Aaron (Aren Okemaysim). Daum and Mann have two adult children.
“They were really supportive. They really wanted me to have an outlet,” said Daum about the support of her children, Hattie and Harlan Daumann (surname is a combination of their parents’ names).
Harlan even contributed the play’s title.
Hattie, along with Daum’s 91-yearold mother, Doris Daum, were at the same show I was at in Victoria. While the pair had attended one of the readings, they like me, were seeing the full production for the first time.
“I was just thrilled. I’m so proud of her. I don’t know how she does it,” said Doris.
When you ask 25-year-old Hattie, a nurse in the Downtown Eastside, how she feels about what her mother has created, she smiles broadly.
“I have immense pride for my mom and that accomplishment. It’s absolutely mind-blowing,” said Hattie. So, what would her dad think of the play?
“He would be so proud,” said Hattie.