In Remember Me, Lekha Desai Morrison has written a work of art rather than an instruction manual on dementia and how to cope with this dreadful disease
Remember Me
at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford
on Saturday, August 31
Review by JON LEWIS
WRITTEN and directed by Lekha Desai Morrison, with directing support from David Moore, Remember Me is a realistic 50-minute drama about how a mother and daughter cope with dementia in their family.
Jack (Benji Ming) is an ageing artist who enjoys solving The Times crossword in under 12 minutes. He lives in a large house with his wife Sally (Karen Ford).
Their son is in Australia and their daughter Keira (Hetty Bentley) is marrying a man with Indian heritage. It is on a pre-wedding visit that Keira discovers by accident a letter from the GP on her father’s laptop that Jack has been diagnosed with dementia, a secret kept from her so that her wedding would be a happy one.
Morrison has written a work of art rather than an instruction manual on dementia and how to cope with this dreadful disease. The burden is heaviest on Sally where little happenings suddenly become more than irritations.
Jack enters the living room with his hair dishevelled, needing Sally to comb it to be respectable. On one of her visits, Keira helps Jack put on a pair of trousers as he’s wearing only a shirt and gum boots.
It’s when Jack develops an obsession with turning electrical appliances off – annoying when it comes to the television, financially and practically crippling when the fridge freezer is switched off daily – that boiling point is reached for Sally and she knows someone else will have to care for Jack.
Sally tries her best; she tracks Jack’s movements by hiding a phone with its tracking app in his clothes as he leaves his own mobile at home.
The emotional pain caused when Jack loses his identity as a painter, when he forgets he painted Sally on their honeymoon standing before a field of tulips in Holland, that hurts more than the more practical issues. His irritability, and innocent joy in regressing into a sort of childhood seem realistic narrative arcs.
With strong performances by all, this is a truthful story that shows how difficult it is to look after someone with a chronic, incurable illness.
