Theatre: Forgotten

Published on Thursday 21 August 2008 20:48

FORGOTTEN ***** DANCE BASE(VENUE 22)

THIS is an incredibly moving piece of theatre that is likely to leave you feeling quite shaken. Part series of monologues and part dance movement, it explores treatment of the elderly in care homes and medical institutions. It sounds a rather bleak prospect, but writer/performer Pat Kinevane brings a wonderful sense of pathos, humour and physicality to the subject, making it relate in a way that is immediate and compelling.

Produced by acclaimed Irish new writing company Fishamble, director Jim Culleton and stylist Catherine Candll juxtapose elements of Japanese theatre in a way that creates an alternative world as beautiful and strange as the one inside the characters' heads.

Kinevane plays the four pensioners – Flor, Dora, Gustus and Eucharia – aged between 80 and 100, effortlessly moving between them and capturing their confused and fragmented memories in a way that is utterly involving. It's incredibly sad to see previously well-respected, wealthy or kind and personable people reduced to dependency upon others and unable to recall the very things that make them who they are.

However, Kinevine is a powerful force and portrays the elderly not as victims, but as dignified and strong people, who merely happen to be suffering from a process that could well affect us all. Indeed, there is something incredibly human and very touching about the spirit his characters demonstrate, pragmatically planning their funerals and speculating on the unknown journey that death entails.

At first there is a danger that the fragmented thoughts of the characters feel too incomprehensible to gel, but gradually the series of insights start to make sense. As well as a visual style inspired by Japanese theatre and culture, the play touches on the contrasts between attitudes towards old age in Eastern and Western civilisations. This is a pertinent and provocative theme, but one that could be developed further to provide a greater sense of unity to the story's various aspects.

Despite its ultimately rather tragic view of old age in today's world, this is an unequivocally beautiful piece, where flashes of memory slice through the confused and often bizarrely silly images that come to those suffering from memory loss and dementia.

• Until tomorrow. Today 6pm