It’s Dark Outside

It’s Dark Outside
Creators: Arielle Gray, Chris Issacs and Tim Watts. Perth Theatre Company. Lennox Theatre, Riverside, Parramatta. May 26 – 29, 2014

Though this performance deals with one of the most confusing, heart-breaking and, unfortunately, increasingly prevalent problems of our time – dementia – it is gentle and incredibly sensitive.

Using a carefully contrived mixture of media, creator/performers Arielle Gray, Chris Issacs and Tim Watts have crafted a delicate piece of theatre that suggests the complex wilderness of the dementia patient based around the Sundowning Syndrome – “the psychological phenomenon associated with confusion and restlessness in patients experiencing forms of dementia. The term ‘Sundowner’ comes from unexplained … behavioural problems which begin to occur in the evening or while the sun is setting”.

There is nothing to be faulted in their carefully researched and designed production. They work seamlessly together to create the bewildering world their character inhabits. From the very first moments, he is tested by things not being as they seem. His is a fuzzy, clouded world, where reality and dreams and memories blend and mix. We see him as himself, frail but still almost in control. We see him as a shadow, struggling through an almost living forest of confusion. We see him as a puppet, deftly and lovingly manipulated by all three performers.

They cover it all: the distressing outward signs of dementia; the loss of individuality, identity; the uncertainty; the regression to a world no one else can share. And they do it with a dexterity and sensitivity that shows genuine immersion in their research and a real understanding of how theatre can be subtle, and perceptive, and very beautiful.

These three artists have worked very closely together in crafting this piece, using a variety of theatrical techniques that capture the ‘haunting form of the disease’. They work just as closely in the performance itself. They move from actor, to puppeteer, to stage crew with perfect timing and dexterous skill, yet never do they lose the poignancy of their old man’s ‘voyage into the wild’.

This is especially vivid when all three are involved in the manipulation of the puppet of their old man. Their hands manipulate deftly and adeptly – but the spill of light onto their faces adds a deeper dimension to their immersion in their work. At each small movement their faces betray the myriad of emotions that he might be feeling – and those around him might sometimes glimpse.

Weaving through the performance, the music of Rachel Dease captures the changing atmospheres – wispy memory, strange adventure, gentle humour, struggling fear.

This is a very beautiful theatre experience. It is a little sad, but gently so. It does what really good theatre does – takes a difficult theme and uses the best conventions of the art to explore the intricacies therein.

Carol Wimmer

Photographer: Richard Jefferson.

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