Can you believe that there is only one care home for Deaf people in the whole of the UK, in the Isle of Wight, with just 15 beds available? Following on from 2022’s Everyday highlighting Deaf experiences of domestic abuse and last year’s one-off staging of The Vagina Monologues, Deafinitely Theatre continue to bring urgent and enlightening Deaf perspectives on important social affairs in their work, now turning its attention to the heartbreaking tragedy – the compounded isolation – that older Deaf people with dementia and their families have to go through.
We are pupils in Rita’s (Anna Seymour) classroom when the protagonist is first introduced to us, helping her class wrap their heads around Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18. She loves poetry and literature, and with stunning Visual Vernacular (kind of like British Sign Language’s version of poetry), the teacher constructs an image of blossom and spring which becomes the gentle and delicate motif for this production, of a mind slowly fading away like petals in the wind which, as it happens, is displayed in Ben Glover’s minimalist video design for the majority of this 90-minute production.
After the passing of her caring husband Mike (Louis Neethling), the kind who redirects any affection displayed by Rita right back onto her, her son Jake (James Boyle) flies in from Holland and reconnects with the mother from which he has grown distant in recent years. He didn’t attend his father’s funeral, and we soon learn Rita didn’t make it to his wedding, where he got married to his husband Paul. The distance only compounds the tragedy, as Jake faces mounds of paperwork including a “This Is Me” form about her life and leans on family friend Jane (Erin Hutching) for support. How do you begin to describe the life story of a person you’ve lost touch with, who is rapidly losing their own sense of self?
Boyle conveys this dilemma perfectly in an emotive and expressive performance, his facial expressions indicative of concern for a much wider conflict slowly teased out in Melissa Mostyn and Paula Garfield’s (who also directs) writing. Another painful reality: an older Deaf person, incredibly familiar with feeling isolated from her time in an oralist education system (flashbacks show her being discouraged from signing Shakespeare) is once again excluded from important conversations – this time around her own care, from hearing professionals with a complete lack of Deaf awareness or sign language knowledge. Hutching does well to solicit the frustration from audiences in this respect when she plays insensitive and awkward officials.
Although this separation is, at times, difficult to follow (two discussions happening simultaneously and splitting the audience’s attention can be a tad disorientating, especially if they’re a hearing audience member who also has to glance up at Glover’s creative captions to understand signed dialogue), it amplifies a crying shame that for some Deaf people, a similar confusion experienced in the early years and childhood rears its head once more in their final years of life.
As such, we see Rita grab onto the small things – both from the past and present – to ground her in a world which is becoming increasingly unfamiliar: the crossword in the newspaper, articles about fighting for Deaf education in previous decades, her small black handbag, and the plane ticket which should have taken her to her son’s wedding. A ticket which, instead, becomes like the petals floating to the ground in the background projection – a powerful and poignant image from Glover of family connections falling apart. It can, of course, be difficult to express mental health on stage in a physical sense (how these conditions manifest externally is often a small snapshot of a much wider problem, although Deafinitely have prior experience with this in the form of 4.48 Psychosis), but Seymour and Garfield work to produce a tender and fragile insight into life with this horrendous disease, and the additional challenges faced by older Deaf people. Glover’s subtitles getting more glitchy and broken are also clever in showing Rita’s loosening grip on family, the past and her own language.
The Promise is devastating and moving, its story made all the more unjust by the unacceptable fact that it’s reality for some Deaf families out there. The final scene in this production – which I won’t spoil here – hammers it home with great effect, rounding off a show about memory and imagination by painting a vision of what could have been: the dignity which every older person deserves. I’ve said it before and I do not hesitate in saying it again: Deafinitely Theatre continue to produce important and affecting work on issues which urgently require greater public awareness.
I just know many hearing people won’t know about the fact mentioned at the very start of this review, and the injustice it embodies, but this powerful play from Garfield does an exceptional job of working to change that.
★★★★★
The Promise is now playing at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith until 11 May.
All performances feature British Sign Language (BSL) and open captions, with a chilled performance taking place on 8 May.
Production Images: Becky Bailey.
Disclaimer: I was invited to watch ‘The Promise’ for free in exchange for a review of the performance as a member of the press. I did not receive payment for this article and while I know Paula Garfield personally and have previously interviewed James Boyle, all opinions stated above are honest and my own.
Liam O'Dell 