The cast of Half Life
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Half Life is one of those plays you walk away from knowing you’ve gained some new insight into life, but you can’t quite put your finger on it — there are so many profound ideas wrapped into the story, it’s hard to identify just one.
Half Life introduces the audience to Patrick (Grant Reddick) and Clara (Shirley Broderick), two folks living in a nursing home. Clara is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, but is blissfully unaware of her declining health — she always feels “wonderful.” Patrick and Clara believe they first met decades ago, during “the war.” (The audience is left to decide the “accuracy” of this memory.) Their romance blossoms anew.
Watching them are their adult children, Donald (Christopher Hunt) and Anna (Valerie Planche), who are struggling with their new roles as caregivers and guardians of their parents. What do you do when your own parent has to ask your permission to marry?
Playwright John Mighton based Half Life on his experiences visiting his own mother in a care home. His familiarity with the details of nursing home life are clearly obvious, right down to the single drawer beside Clara’s bed for all her personal possessions. The love story is unexpectedly touching, as Clara and Patrick defy society’s expectations that they are too old for romance.
Mighton reminds the audience that these withered beings, despite their diapers and wheelchairs, are still people with feelings and desires. When Donald quizzes his mother on why she has a new shawl, Clara replies, “So I can look my best.” In another instance, Patrick and Clara want to spend an evening alone together, but Nurse Tammy (Kira Bradley) and Reverend Hill (Kevin Rothery) insist on remaining as chaperones, as the couple dance in their dressing gowns. I, for one, wanted to yell, “Just leave them alone. They’re still adults.”
It is Broderick who truly steals the show with her completely believable and touching portrayal of Clara. Besides Patrick and Clara, the audience meets another nursing home resident, Agnes (Kathryn Kerbes). Unfortunately, Kerbes’s portrayal of a contrary, cranky old woman took away from the otherwise stellar authenticity of the rest of the play. Kerbes is simply too young for the part, and her performance seemed a silly caricature next to those of Broderick and Reddick.
The stage, with its use of white flowing curtains to separate the various sets from waiting room to bedroom, evoked the institutional sterility of a care home, though the billowing fabric did lend a feeling of ethereal beauty to the place. Unexpected beauty found in an unexpected place, much like the residents.
In an interview, Mighton said that in writing this play, he wanted to explore what it is “that shines through” when people are seemingly lost to Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. Some of the most philosophical and probing issues of the play are left to the waiting room discussions between Donald and the Reverend. They debate the existence of the soul and the possibilities (and limitations) of artificial intelligence in an attempt to address Mighton’s question.
Despite the play’s unsatisfying ending, in which the playwright apparently can’t decide how to end the story to everybody’s satisfaction, leaving loose ends flying, the show is a must-see. From a seemingly uninspiring premise about nursing home inmates, Half Life is one of the most thoughtful and touching plays I’ve seen in a long while.
