On Tuesday Oct. 21, the Quick Center hosted “Lost Lear,” a compelling production depicting the experience of an elderly woman navigating life living with dementia. Dan Colley and Company did a remarkable job at offering the audience a comedic retelling of “King Lear,” a Shakespearean tragedy where a king divides his kingdom based on his three daughters’ expression of love. Inspired by his own experience visiting his grandmother in a dementia care home, Colley entwines this emotional upheaval into his main character, Joy, invoking a spectacular representation of her personal influence on her external world.
Joy is presented with a grandeur captivating the audience. Our first glimpse of Joy begins with a projection of her tracing the workings of her face with a makeup brush. Fierce and electrifying, her dominating presence soon stuns the audience with her opening act. Accompanied by her primary caretaker and her son Conner, Joy encompasses the role of the King in “King Lear” as she employs her caretaker as a surrogate for her own personal play.
As Joy and her caretaker expose us to the inner workings of how dementia settles in the mind, we learn that a person’s theme memory is usually something they were good at. Joy is living in the memory of her flourishing 30s, where she rehearses paraphrased versions of Shakespearean text from her memory of acting. Joy’s world is layered with a plethora of the past, steadily overlapping with the personal distortion of the present.
Connor, trapped in the confines of his own identity as the forgotten son, delivers an exceptional representation of how painful incrementally losing fragments of your mother can be. The visuals in the production allowed for moments of both Joy and Connor to be individually projected close up on screen. Every slither of emotion, every ounce of desperation for his mother to understand, to love, to recognize was revealed through these intimate moments.
Connor yearns to rekindle the connection between Joy as mother and son, yet ultimately finds that he is limited in his outreach to her. Any uncoordinated approach at connecting with her is futile, slipping through the cracks of her memory into a bottomless pit. As chaos ensues and Connor finds himself more and more frustrated, Joy begins to fracture as parts of her present come back to reality.
“Lost Lear” offers its audience more than a theatrical experience. The production illustrates the complexity of memory, identity and loss, all while refusing to reduce dementia to a stereotypical association to tragedy. Dan Colley humanizes the condition, showing sensitive moments of tenderness and frustration. Through his inventive staging and emotional depth, Colley’s work transforms empathy into understanding and leaves the audience with an appreciation for enduring humanity that persists even as memories fade.