What I liked
tilts of the head, changes in tone, travel around the care unit
What I didn't like
NA
My overall impression
There are times when art reveals feelings that you did not know you had, emotions repressed beyond self-recognition by the quotidian need to function in the face of implacable inefficacy and hopelessness. Natalie Grove’s original, intensely labile script and her one-woman performance reified my own disruptive coping strategy in caring for my demented wife. Her mother, like my incarnate wife, is a ghostly victim of Alzheimer’s irreparable injustice. Despite the absence of the real protagonist in this reveal, Ms. Grove fills a nearly barren stage with her mother’s powerful effect on those who love and remember her.
The side effects of the disease reach far beyond its immediate victim. Eschewing pure pathos, Ms. Grove evokes a humorous coquettish excitement and bathos at prospective relationships with hunk types like the masseur and doctor which, as they fail, make more poignant the limited number of opportunities to develop relationships when depleted by emotional exhaustion and the inordinate time consumed in caregiving.
Ms. Grove exquisitely dons the fake garb of so-good-to-see you happiness that clothes the commencement of each encounter with her mother, and her simultaneously guilty relief as she slithers away at the end of each visit. And the subtle slyness of her performance doesn’t stop there. She illuminates frustration with bureaucratic requirements like powers of attorney and memory care unit rules, and the self medication necessary to dull the pain enough to travel and sleep.
But this magical performance is not just for caregivers. Ms. Grove shines her brilliant light on the contradictions, foibles and dysfunction that affect us all when under emotional duress.
