Review: HELD, Old Red Lion Theatre

Joe Ward Munrow has previously found success in writing plays that weave together real-life stories on topics ranging from the Luddites to the mental-health services of modern Britain. In HELD he turns his attention to dementia, with a play that is part family drama, part physics lecture and part exploration of isolation and memory. But, despite its best intentions, it ultimately proves neither moving nor comic.

A Drunken Sailor presents the London premiere of this play. The focus is on two brothers who visit their mum, Mary (Julia Munrow), and struggle to navigate her decline. David (Jack Waterman) is hot-headed and lets his despair overcome him; the pensive Simon (Elias Williams) finds comfort in his mum’s physical presence, even if she can’t even identify him. The two brothers make small talk, from kitchen walls to new schools, while Mary interjects with her own memories about growing up and the difficulties she faced during motherhood.

The implication is that dementia isn’t just a condition that’s difficult for relatives and people close to the sufferer. David remarks, “It’s never me, is it?”, as his mum constantly calls out for Simon – meanwhile, Mary is in the middle of telling a story about how she came close to drowning Simon when he was a boy. Through these recollections we are reminded that ‘the truth’ is often just everyone’s imperfect, fuzzy memories mixed together.

But this is also the play’s problem. There are too many ‘imperfect’ memories that end up serving as soliloquies about seemingly random subjects. Simon goes on a long-winded ramble about electrons and how “the Earth is revolving around the sun at 60,000 mph.” David begins an expository monologue about his new induction hob, repeating the showroom salesman’s pitch: “only the pot gets hot”, which is emblematic of the production’s misdirected focus. Though the dialogue is no fault of the actors, Linda Miller‘s direction compounds the problem with long pauses and frequent lighting changes that slow the pace to a crawl.

There are some moments of triumph from the cast. Munrow confidently translates the physical decline of a dementia sufferer with heartbreaking periods of verbal incomprehension. Waterman brings much-needed energy, though needs direction to modulate his volume. The production struggles, however, to establish any sense of a brotherly bond between Waterman and Williams, with the latter’s measured responses registering as flat, particularly during a heated argument when his “Don’t mock me” is delivered at barely audible volume.

There is, unfortunately, no set design at all apart from three chairs. While this may serve to amplify the sense of isolation that dementia can bring for the sufferer and the strain on family life for those around them, the production cries out for visual metaphor. The underwater imagery that the text invokes – Mary’s near-drowning of Simon, the sense of submersion in fragmenting memory – remains unrealised, leaving the climax without theatrical urgency.

While there are some, albeit fleeting, moments of poignancy, I left the theatre thinking more about redecorating my kitchen and installing an induction hob than I did about how the past, present and truth intersect.

Presented by A Drunken Sailor
Written by Joe Ward Munrow
Directed by Linda Miller
Co-Produced by Gabriela Chanova and Izzy Macpherson

HELD is running at Old Red Lion Theatre until Saturday 15 November.