Elegy

by Nick Payne

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 30 April 2016

Nick Payne seems to delight in concentrated short plays - like his earlier Constellations (reviewed in June 2015) his new Elegy is only 70 minutes long. Directed by Josie Rourke and designed by Tom Scutt, it features Zoe Wanamaker as  Lorna, Barbara Flynn as Carrie and Nina Sosanya as Miriam.

In Elegy Lorna has had surgery for an undefined mental illness, which circumstances suggest is a form of dementia. The surgery involves replacing damaged neurons with synthetic ones, but the consequence is total loss of the memories which the original neurons carried. In Lorna's case this stretches back over twenty years of her life, which in turn means eliminating all her memories of having been married to Carrie.

The play opens with Carrie and Lorna speaking after the surgery has taken place - a painfully awkward scene in which Lorna is fiercely protecting a vulnerable new mental equilibrium while Carrie is inevitably hurt by the other woman's attitude. It is the classic case of facing the absence or deterioration of personality in someone with dementia, made worse by the fact that this has been induced by a medical procedure for which Carrie, with enduring power of attorney, had had to give permission.

Short but typically intense scenes take us backward through the story, so that we gradually piece together the situation described above - Carrie being asked by the consultant (Miriam) not to visit Lorna; Miriam talking with Lorna; earlier discussions describing the procedure; scenes earlier still of Lorna and Carrie talking about the illness and whether to allow the operation to take place (what the lasting power of attorney actually permits Carrie to do). The play closes with a repetition of the opening scene.

The stage has a gravelled floor, and a number of chairs such as might be present in a hospital waiting room; and enclosed in a perspex box is a huge tree trunk split down the middle. In this anonymous and somewhat disquieting space the scenes play out raising all sorts of questions about identity, medical intervention, and the uprooting of assumptions about personal relationships. Zoe Wanamaker and Barbara Flynn are excellent as Lorna and Carrie, and, given the play's brevity and elliptical style, we can sense from their performances the style of their life together and the havoc Lorna's illness has caused.

However, the technical trick of presenting scenes in reverse chronological order may have worked against the emotional impact of the narrative. The play requires attention in order to work out what has happened, which can distract from how it is affecting the two women. Also, the first and final scene, though poignant, cannot be the end of the story (as such) since it is evidently only the first encounter between the two after the operation. Lorna maintains her distance and self-protectiveness by insisting that any further meetings be arranged 'as this one was' though the solicitor, implying that any rapprochement will be wither very slow or non-existent, but this is perhaps an awkward place to leave us.

This is an interesting contrast to Florian Zeller's The Father (reviewed in October 2015), in which the revelation of the father's condition was linear (not in reverse order) though also requiring close attention to understand. Perhaps the addition in Elegy of the invented medical procedure defused some of the distressing implications of dementia; the play is strongly acted and intriguing, but not overwhelming.