It’s often said that Shakespeare’s “mad king” suffers from dementia, but Dan Colley’s Lost Lear is a crisp, fresh reinterpretation that goes much further than simply dusting off a classic. Lear appears on the Traverse’s stage – made coolly clinical by set designer Andrew Clancy – through the memories of Joy, a domineering and magnetic retired actor who played the role to great acclaim in her youth. Now living with dementia herself, Joy (in a powerhouse performance from Venetia Bowe) finds comfort and control in constantly re-rehearsing the play with her carers. But for her estranged son Conor (played stoic and self-contained by Peter Daly), this repetitive re-treading of the boards ignores the real-life complications of their family dynamic.
A gauzy hospital curtain, a padded armchair, elegant audio-visual design and an astonishing puppet ensure that little is for certain in this accomplished, slippery production. Roles are doubled, life contradicts art, and an old script offers a possible path forward in Colley’s dissection of how we speak to family members with dementia, and that what we need from them likely contradicts what they need from us. Lost Lear is best, and most painful, when it lingers on the tragedy that Conor and Joy’s realities simply cannot coexist.
Lost Lear, Traverse Theatre, until 24 Aug (not 4, 11, 18), various times