In this age of oh-so-desirable immortality, the yoga, facelifts, the forty-somethings still having “fun nights” out on the town all point to one thing – the complete and incontrovertible fear of death. Through the 50 minute Fringe theatre, Chalk…
In this age of oh-so-desirable immortality, the yoga, facelifts, the forty-somethings still having “fun nights” out on the town all point to one thing – the complete and incontrovertible fear of death.
The finality of this topic has led to another bizarre social peculiarity, the existence of the retirement industry. Set inside Shady Meadows Retirement Home (in Auckland’s leafy Meadowbank, of course), “Chalk” shines a little light into the somewhat dark internal life and politics of New Zealand’s geriatric care community.
Through the 50 minute journey, “Chalk,” showing at the Auckland Fringe Festival 2011, delivers a series of interrelated vignettes, with actors Isla Adamson and Josephine Stewart-Tewhiu flitting in and out of a diverse web of believable characters with an active ease. The two-person performance was really good actually; its sparse nature left an able amount of room for the story to fall from laugh-out-loud humour, to deeply disturbing, to tear-jerkingly poignant in a matter of minutes.
Care worker, Clint, described by his boss as “bloody retarded”, was a constant source of laughs. “We know she’s happy; she always has a smile on her face,” he says of an inmate (whoops, I mean resident), who is in the obvious catatonic state of beyond-the-point-of-no-return dementia.
His unique obituary directed at the very recently deceased Mrs Lemon spun an odd (innocently dark/funny) dimension to what only moments prior was one of the toughest scenes in the play. The amorality of Supre-slut Karen (can I say that online?), through her brain-less treatment towards Mrs Lemon’s dead body despicably personified our collective confusion and inability to understand what is beyond the shroud.
Proud kuia, Nina, was probably the more intriguing character of the bunch, with her relentless desire to be free; her packed suitcase constantly by her side. The torture of her heartbreak is almost tangible upon the realisation that her cultural expectations have been squashed into the home’s polythene floor (not carved into the walls alongside her ancestors, as hoped). Her sterile present was the only thing she had left, having been roundly rejected by her whanau. The institutionalisation of the elderly was supposed to be a white problem; it turns out life isn’t that simple anymore.
The opening of the performance left the audience in a prolonged awkward state of total darkness. But the “light at the end of the tunnel” was positively heart warming. There is always hope, with this hope shining brightly through the conclusion of “Chalk”. The live-animated sequence detailed the typically-Kiwi coastal escape of Nina and Alice (the granddaughter of Mrs Lemon) as they “packed up their troubles in an old kit bag”, ending said “troubles” in the ocean at Bethells Beach, leaving the audience without any other choice but to smile?
“Life is like chalk; fragile, not permanent”, states Alice, after her uncaring grandmother’s death. And this haunting line describes not only the story presented at The Basement last night, but also THE story.
On a personal note (sorry readers), over the past few years I have watched (from a guilty distance) the progressive deterioration, and subsequent institutionalisation of my own grandfather; witnessing the full spectrum of my extended family’s response to the situation. In the programme, director Abigail Greenwood implores the audience to “Go and see your grandparents!” That is going to have to happen really soon.
Please go and watch this play.
For more info see www.aucklandfringe.co.nz
Written by Theo Sangster, 3 March 2011.
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