Theatre
Still Alice
King’s Theatre, Edinburgh
Neil Cooper, Three stars
It’s the clutter you notice first in David Grindley’s staging of Christine Mary Dunford’s play, adapted from Lisa Genova’s novel about a woman whose life is ripped apart by young-onset dementia aged just 50 years old. The furniture in the open-plan living room and kitchen arrangement of Jonathan Fensom’s set seems to spill into each other, the physical manifestation of a busy and over-loaded mind that will gradually be stripped bare until there’s nothing to hold onto anymore.
This is what happens to Alice, the driven Harvard linguistics professor who finds herself slowly losing her faculties. Like her would-be actress daughter Lydia, Alice suddenly has to improvise her way through life, aided here by her inner self brought to life by Eva Pope, who gives voice to Alice’s internal workings. Where Alice and her husband John were once academic equals, by the end she can’t recognise him or her children, but remains dependent on the kindness of the people closest to her who are now strangers.
Making its UK premiere in this tour of Leeds Playhouse production from earlier this year, Dunford’s play pre-dates the 2015 Oscar-winning film by a couple of years, but over its 90-minute duration packs a similar emotional punch. Despite the elegiac score sign-posting the way, much of the production’s power comes from Sharon Small’s performance as Alice. It’s an increasingly moving and remarkably nuanced turn, which, along with Pope’s presence, forms the heart and soul of an occasionally uneven piece of work.
This is despite the efforts of Martin Marquez as John, Ruth Ollman as Lydia and Mark Armstrong as Alice and John’s high-flying son Thomas. In the end, though, as Alice’s half-life goes on, it is Small that leaves her mark in a heart-rending portrayal of a woman who loses herself, with only the love of others to keep her going.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here