Pauline Daniels, Ged McKenna in Held. Photograph by Christian Smith.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Pauline Daniels, Ged McKenna, Alan Stocks.
The idea of losing someone piece by piece, memory by bittersweet memory is one that no human being ever wants to contemplate, its implications and devastating results can break apart families whilst the person who slowly moves further and further away cannot help in anyway. Such was the authoritative writing of Joe Ward Munrow and the directing of the creatively astute Lorne Campbell in Held, that the heart was pulled in many different directions as the audience empathised and felt sympathy for each character.
What was magnificent in this particular play hosted by the Playhouse Theatre Studio was the fact there was no glossing over the intensity and devastation that dementia can wreck upon a family. Upon an already fractured and disjointed family it can be the final bitter blow.
Under Lorne Campbell’s direction, all three actors demonstrated incredible acting prowess to show the synaptic misfires that made the sufferer so utterly dependant on the kindness of others. Ged McKenna’s final admission of what he nearly puts his mother through borders on the most dramatic and sensitive piece of monologue delivered inside the Playhouse.
Watching Ms. Daniels portray Mary as she sat detached between her two warring over the past and her future, was a joy but full of pathos and tragedy. The small movements with her hands as she scrubbed and tried to cleanse the harrowing memories from her mind in which she made just one small mistake was angst ridden and incredible piece of acting.
Mr Stocks has also long been a favourite of theatre audiences in Liverpool, his happy go lucky demeanour has won him plaudits and fans for his comic timing and his good natured portrayals but in Held it has to be said that his presence on stage, his powerful and commanding performance was his finest ever part to date. Like Andrew Schofield’s part of Paul Sheldon in Misery, this Liverpool comic actor has found his best part playing a tortured soul whose life is spiralling out of his control.
Joe Ward Munrow deserves much admiration for writing one of the most sensitive, dramatic and touching plays by a young writer at the Playhouse. A play that speaks volumes about the way that families deal or don’t deal with the strangely taboo subject of dementia. Incredible!
Ian D. Hall