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But
Slenderly Known Himself
By
Kathryn Ceceri
Taking
Leave
By
Nagle Jackson, directed by Steve Fletcher
Curtain Call Theatre, through March 14
Curtain Call Theatre producer Carol Max was worried that presenting
a play about Alzheimer’s Disease would keep audiences away
in droves. Judging by the mid-run full house—and the audience’s
reaction to the play’s ample humor in the face of sorrow—Max
probably doesn’t have to worry.
Shakespeare scholar Eliot Pryne once expounded on how prose
equaled madness in King Lear. Now he himself is delusional.
His suburban Seattle home, he’s convinced, is a luxury hotel—albeit
one where the lobby is often strangely empty and the guests
have an overly familiar attitude. Although his endlessly patient
caregiver, Mrs. Fletcher, has been able to keep him safe and
fed so far, the time is coming when decisions will have to
be made. Like Lear, Eliot has three daughters: Alma, a prim
high-school guidance counselor who lives nearby but doesn’t
always keep her promises to help out; Liz, a dynamic “working
actress” in L.A. who flies up to take charge; and Cordelia,
the baby, who drifts around Europe and appears in the midst
of the family powwow unexpectedly. Each has her own reaction
to what their father has become. Alma prefers to think of
him as “whimsical”; Liz wants to face facts and find a good
facility for him. Cordelia chooses not to judge what’s happened.
“We don’t get better or worse,” she says at the end. “We just
go to a different place.”
Helping Eliot when he can’t find the right word (a suitcase
is “a thing you put things in”) is his lucid self, “the me
of me.” This Eliot fills in the gaps, offers comfort, and
occasionally steps into the action to play the scene as it
would have gone, had the old Eliot not been exchanged for
the new one. And occasionally the “real” Eliot, in his ramblings
into the past or rare moments of competence, lets slip a glimpse
of who he used to be.
The acting in Taking Leave is superb. John Noble as
Eliot, and Richard Rameaka as “the old” Eliot, contribute
equally to the picture of the character that emerges. The
daughters, Barbara Richards as Alma, Maryhelen Lounello as
Cordelia, and producer Max as Liz, do a good job of playing
off each other’s very different personalities (although the
gap between Richards and Max is so wide it sometimes seems
unlikely they grew up in the same family). Robin Leary makes
the saintly Mrs. Fletcher appealing and believable.
Scenic and lighting designer Mal Martin’s set tries for an
Alice in Wonderland feel by bracketing the living room’s
built-in bookcases with what looks like the spines of gigantic
books. Lights and sound (designed by Graeme McKenna) combine
well at the end of Act I to make Eliot’s terror of his delusions
real.
Though it bears a strong resemblance to a much-better-known
play about an academic whose daughters must deal with his
mental breakdown, Taking Leave predates David Auburn’s
Broadway hit Proof by about two years. Author Nagle
Jackson dedicates Taking Leave to his mother, an Alzheimer’s
patient, and it may be his insistence on keeping Eliot at
the center of the story that prevents the play from plumbing
greater depths than it does. Eliot is “dwindling into prose”;
it’s left to those around him to be affected by the experience,
but the transformation seems a little too quick and too open-ended
to provide a satisfying ending. Still, director Steve Fletcher
makes the most out of the well-crafted elements of a story
for which the ending will always be sad.
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