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A unique creator in international theatre, writer/director Alexander Zeldin specialises in making us look at neglected corners of society where the state is failing. This latest work deals with the grand-daddy of these, the very end of life, and it is gruellingly compelling. Set in a care home, it brims with empathy for both the residents and the harried, underpaid staff.
It furnishes fine roles for older actors including the great Linda Bassett and at least one professional carer who has never acted before. This work is what Alan Bennett’s Allelujah! could have been.
Yet I have some personal misgivings. Aged 19 I worked in an old people’s home. In 2020 my father died - with dementia but of a Urinary Tract Infection, like one of the characters here - in hospital after being cared for at home by my mother. She is herself now 89 and in supported accommodation, independent but physically frail. I’m slightly closer to this material than to that of Zeldin’s “inequalities trilogy” at the National, which dealt with office cleaners, those in temporary accommodation, and a charity kitchen.
And I was therefore more aware of the artifice that underpins Zeldin’s practice of meticulous research and apparent naturalism. Old, infirm people just aren’t this funny, and even those in extreme distress aren’t this consistently sad. They certainly don’t come out with cris de coeur like: “Why is there so much pain in the world!?”
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But this is to apply real-life standards to what is, after all, a work of fiction. And the grinding pace, the repetition and the exasperation of old age is well observed. If this doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, it’s because it’s not. But it is a singular, compassionate piece of work.
The focus is on Bassett’s Joan, newly arrived in the facility after a fall. Warning lights flash in the mind as she insists that she’s “on the mend” and will soon be fetched by her family. Joan is in denial – or simply forgets – about her frail mental and physical state, and her confusion and sense of betrayal are keenly felt.
The other residents are deftly sketched in rather than given full life, though in some cases this is poignantly indicative of an existence that is narrowing. Ann Mitchell’s genteel Agnes fixates on otters. Diana Payan’s Paula, prone to shouting “retreat!”, slowly withdraws from the world. Richard Durden’s John is lost in bafflement until recalled to the present by a remembered song or the possibility of affection. When someone passes away – and spoiler alert, it happens – lights come gently up as they join us in the audience.
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Perhaps the most discomfiting figure is Hayley Carmichael’s Simone, younger than the rest but suffering from some form of mental impairment that makes her verbally and sometimes physically disinhibited. Whether or not she was a “lady of the night” as one character quaintly puts it, she has clearly suffered damage. But her confusion, her lewdness and her escape fantasies are played largely for laughs.
The part of Joan’s daughter, a widowed mother to two stroppy sons, is underdeveloped. Rosie Cavaliero, a dependably subtle actress, struggles to bring her to life, though the boys supply some much needed belly laughs. By contrast, the evolving relationship between senior carer Hazel (Llewella Gideon) and trainee Fanta (Aoife Gaston) is acutely well observed, as is Hazel’s careworn kindness. The scene where she silently, methodically washes the naked Joan is beautiful.
Zeldin doesn’t pontificate about the crisis in care: he just shows the lights periodically blinking off and Hazel’s flashes of exhaustion after a 20-hour shift. Rosanna Vize’s authentically bleak set transforms twice, and it’s surely testament to the studied realism that she and Zeldin bring to this world that I thought I even caught a musty, antiseptic care-home smell.
What’s to be done now we’re all living too long, increasingly frail and increasingly in need of care? Zeldin doesn’t pretend to have any answers. But this powerful show presents it as a question we’ll all have to face.
To 11 Jul, youngvic.org.
