‘OUTGOING TIDE’ IS ELOQUENT PORTRAYAL OF DEMENTIA
Like the tide that goes in and out at the shore of his Chesapeake Bay home, Gunner Concannon goes in and out of lucidity. One moment he is the irascible old kidder who loves an irreverent, un-P.C. joke as much as he loves his devoted spouse Peg. Another moment, without warning, he is lost in the past or lost in town or trying to watch an episode of “Cops” on the microwave oven.
It’s the heartbreaking reality in Bruce Graham’s “The Outgoing Tide,” and the reality for so many of our aging population’s families.
North Coast Repertory Theatre’s production of “The Outgoing Tide” marks the second time in four years that the Solana Beach company has delved into the issue of a family patriarch’s memory loss. Its eloquent staging of Florian Zeller’s “The Father” in 2018 was anguished and unsettling. “The Outgoing Tide” is certainly that, but when he’s clear of mind, Gunner Concannon, portrayed with heart and fire by Andrew Barnicle, cracks wise with unfiltered, to-hell-with-’em regularity.
As in “The Father,” no explicit reference to Alzheimer’s or dementia is made. None needs to be. That
something is wrong with Gunner’s memory is revealed in the opening scene, when, while fishing, he seems to be chatting up a new neighbor. It turns out that the neighbor is actually Gunner’s grown son, Jack (Leo Marks), whom he does not recognize.
Gunner is fully aware of what is happening to him and is fiercely opposed to the care community that wife Peg (Linda Gehringer) has identified and visited. He likens it to a “Roach Motel,” where you check in but never check out.
As “The Outgoing Tide” moves forward, it becomes much more than a loss-ofmemory play. Its family, like most, is fraught with issues. These are illuminated in
both short flashback sequences and in real time, the principal one being Gunner’s relationship with his son. Jack was never the ballplaying boy Gunner envisioned, nor the man’s man adult. His treatment of Jack as a child was disapproving and at times mean-spirited.
All of which makes Jack’s presence on the scene uneasy and conflicted.
When Gunner proposes to his wife and son a way to spare them, even more than himself, the pain of the complete mental deterioration that is inevitable, Peg is confronted with a devastating sacrifice.
Gehringer’s Peg bears the weight of all the feelings of someone who’s losing a loved one degree by degree. There
is frustration, desperation, fear, anger and guilt. In spite of their squabbling, Peg’s and Gunner’s love story is one a half-century old. How can she let go?
Under the direction of Nike Doukas, affecting performances by both Gehringer and Barnicle restrain “The Outgoing Tide” from melodrama. Marks’ Jack is trapped in the middle of things and is less sympathetic as an adult than as a child in flashbacks.
Noteworthy are Marty Burnett’s Chesapeake set and sound design by Aaron Rumley so atmospheric that it can effect the tiny skipping of a rock over the surface of the water. Life at its softest and simplest.