Harriet Joyce on Matthew Seager’s show music and Alzheimer’s disease at artsdepot

Promotion image for In Other Words at artsdepot

Translated into multiple languages, performed across four continents and soundtracked by the warm vocals of Frank Sinatra, Matthew Seager’s In Other Words, tells the love story of Jane and Arthur. Spanning across 50 years and exploring the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, artsdepot’s studio theatre was the perfect place to stage such an intimate story.

Sinatra’s discography guides you through the trials and tribulations in the couple’s life story as the play, despite minimal set design, transports its audience from the bar where the couple first meet through to the coldness of the hospital where Arthur is first diagnosed.

For those who have watched their loved ones suffer through the disease, the play feels like the closest thing to understanding the isolation they must be feeling. Simultaneously, it manages to make those who are caring for somebody with Alzheimer’s feel seen and without guilt.

Throughout the play music is a powerful presence, as it is for many who suffer from dementia. As the audience take their seats, You Make Me Feel So Young plays softly, and every other song or sound effect chosen feels just as symbolic and purposeful. The play opens with That’s Life and as Jane, played by Lydia White, shrouds herself with her blue cardigan, we’re consumed by her thoughts.

Bobby Darin’s Beyond the Sea is as transformative in the play as it is for Arthur, played by Seager himself. While music brings back fond memories for Arthur, it also helps punctuate between the past and present. The non-linear narrative shifts between watching the couple’s story unfold for ourselves and the characters breaking the fourth wall to narrate. This is another immersive technique that makes it feel like the characters are personally telling us their love story.

Not only do we see Arthur’s journey with Alzheimer’s but the overall impact the disease has on the couple. The characters are boxed into a spotlight by square shutters, sometimes in a split stage to focus on how both characters are trapped by the diagnosis. The stark white and steely blue colouring helps to set the hospital’s location before flickering to pull us into Arthur’s world, marking his confusion by distorted ringing and muffled echoing.

With no costume changes, the design was carefully selected to remain timeless as the characters age and move through the 1960s to the 2000s. We largely rely on both White’s captivating demeanour and Seager’s evocative physicality to help show how Arthur is deteriorating. His gait becomes hunched as the condition progresses; just one example of how the acting truly made this raw and at times humorous play so moving.

The play was then shortly followed by a Q&A. This was not only a chance for the audience to get a deeper understanding on how the play came about but for those members of the audience whose loved ones had been affected by the disease to speak on how deeply they had been moved by such a realistic portrayal.

For more information visit: artsdepot.co.uk/whats-on

https://linktr.ee/InOtherWordsTour

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