LOSING HERSELF IN LEAR’S NIGHTMARE
Dementia treatment drags former actress Joy into a never-ending role
MICHAEL MOFFATT SHOW OF THE WEEK
In many ways, Lost Lear has much in common with Frank McGuinness’s 2021 play, The Visiting Hour. The theme, dementia, is the same, but the treatment and presentation are totally different and it becomes an absorbing new experience. The play, written and directed by Dan Colley, is a revealing and disturbing insight into the actuality of severe dementia, of the impenetrable wall that locks people into their own minds and defies the best efforts of outsiders to break through. The outside world is just that: outside, incomprehensible.
We initially see Joy, who appears to be a young actress, looking into a mirror, carefully applying make-up to her face on full screen. You wonder why she’s doing the same thing so meticulously at such length.
She’s a victim of dementia, being given a treatment aimed at having her live inside a memory of her past life to help her engage with the living world again. And the chosen method is a rehearsal of King Lear in which she obviously once acted.
She plays the roles of Lear and of his beloved daughter Cordelia whom he banished for telling the truth. It seems odd that the attractive young Venetia Bowe should be playing the ancient Lear. But that’s a vital part of the play’s concept.
This is not a lecture or a discussion on dementia: it’s a dramatic insight into that terrible world, and it involves the audience in working out for itself what exactly is going on as the story unfolds with the repetitive use of language and staging.
The scrim curtain that’s pulled backwards and forwards, reflects the distance between the world of the patient and her surroundings. And the sound effects and visual display representing fluctuating neuron signals in the brain are all part of the exposition.
Joy can no longer see herself as she actually is; in her mind she’s still young and talented. A number of people, including her son Conor (Peter Daly) are trying unsuccessfully to help her escape into reality. He’s presented to Joy as her stage understudy but he has no acting experience and is unconvinced about the therapeutic effects of the treatment. Her rare escapes from her frozen mind are matched by his growing sense of frustration
The tragic story of Lear is dovetailed sensitively into the story. The way he has been treated by his elder daughters has driven Lear to the edge of madness, to a selfinflicted state where he can barely recognise himself. He wonders if he really is a once powerful king.
In his distressed state he’s confused by Cordelia’s reappearance, barely able to recognise her, just as
‘In a role demanding a wide emotional and physical range… Bowe is remarkable’
Joy is unable to recognise her son.
Bowe gives a remarkable performance in a role that demands a wide emotional and physical range of expression.
The play begins with a rather jokey introduction by Manus Halligan to the story of Lear’s destructive audience with his three daughters and its outcome. But it’s not a joke that can travel very far.