Exctied by Belle & Sebastion on Friday, I was eager for more culture on Saturday. Luckily, Ildi had bought tickets to see the play “Norman & Beatrice” at the Connelly Theater around the corner from her apartment. Blessedly, no one sings in the show. Instead two actors gave an unbelieavably heartwrenching account of two lunches in a Midwestern kitchen, one in 2001 and one in 1951.
Act I, originally the whole play, shows the 70-something couple Norman and Beatrice having lunch on a Sunday and mostly dealing with Norman’s Alzheimer’s induced dementia. His charm and efforts to part the fog combined with Beatrices fortitude and love made the packed house swallow hard defnitley more than once.
Playwright Barbara Hammond chose to not end the story on such a sad note and uses Act II to show the couple in the very same kitchen fifty years earlier on a morning when Beatrice has just informed Norman the he is soon to be a father. Actors Jane Nichols and Graeme Malcolm shed the years during intermission and appear on stage afterward as a insecure, love-filled wife and a brash veteren freshly home ready to take on Wisconsin The spark for all the memories that will someday jumble in his brain unfold over a casual lunch. Ms. Hammond leaves us not with hope but the small warming knowledge that sometimes Alzheimer’s and death are just one end note in a long, rich life.
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Sadly, this review comes too late for my readers to do anything about it. The show is closing today at 3PM. So if that description got you in the mood to see it, now you know you can’t. Keep an eye out for a reprise or any more of Barbara Hammond’s work in the future and be nicer than me and email with better forwarning.
Related Links:
– Synapse Productions
– http://www.barbarahammond.com