Lost Lear ★★★★

Using one of Shakespeare’s tragedies as a vehicle to express a current theme, is well-used device, and writer and director Dan Colley has done this to great effect with Lost Lear at the Traverse Theatre.

Opening the piece almost conversationally, Liam (Manus Halligan) appears front of stage and proceeds to explain the story of King Lear, seemingly to the audience. Moments later though, Conor (Gus McDonagh) appears, looking bemused and concerned as he walks in to the scene to visit his mother, Joy (Venetia Bowe), so perhaps the recount is aimed more squarely at him. She is a resident in a home for elderly and has dementia, recalling nothing of her family or her past life but, as a former actor, she has almost perfect recall of the eponymous play and with a supporting cast of care-workers, re-enacts scenes from it daily. This is her only means of communication and the same scenes – those relating to parental grief and loss – are repeated over and over.

This is a very clever piece with a remarkable cast – Venetia Brown, who embodies both King Lear and Conor’s absent parent, is far too young to be the elderly mother of a middle-aged man – but represents the younger Joy, vibrant and strong with a clear sense of her own skill as an actor. A very powerful performance.

Conor, whose pain is palpable, is desperate to understand his disjointed childhood, the mother who abandoned him to the care of his father and who left his imploring letters unanswered. In Joy’s dementia clouded brain there is no clear response and there are no apologies and slowly Conor realises that there is no point in pursuing them. By the time he realises this, Joy has been reduced to a mere shell of herself – and is now beautifully and symbolically represented by a puppet, managed and moved by care workers Em Ormonde and Clodagh O’Farrell.

The audience is left to understand the situation as Conor himself does and it is not without some powerful triggers and challenges. There is good use of back projection and voice over which compound both the understanding of the situation and the remoteness of a resolution between mother and son. Not an easy watch – but a powerful one.