What I liked
.
What I didn't like
.
My overall impression
“The Old Woman” is a melancholy story of one son’s experiences in helping to care for a mother with dementia. Writer and performer John Grady couches this show in the framework of telling stories. His own stories, the stories of his mother – we hear the recording of his mother at the beginning of the show and later find out that Grady recorded his mother telling stories from her life – and even the recital of an old Irish bedtime story called “The Old Woman.” This piece poses more questions than it answers, but in an intentional way to spark thought. ‘Do the drugs we take make us better, or are they actually to blame for making us sicker?’ was particularly poignant. Grady is able to infuse some comedy into the beginning of the piece, but as the story progresses that comedy turns bittersweet as only someone who has watched a parent wither away can truly appreciate.
Grady excels at storytelling, and has the gift of being able to convey whole paragraphs in a single look. His experience as a dancer, which is apparent from the graceful way that he moves around the stage, comes up on several occasions during his mother’s story ingeniously planting a seed for the audience. By the end of the piece I had heard about how much his mother loved watching him dance, and I wanted to watch him dance too. Much like the fairy in the bedtime story, Grady grants that wish and ends his show with a haunting dance piece. This is not a show to uplift the spirits, it is a show for those who love to hear stories.
