A powerful production about dementia.
With simple and powerful imagery, this is a moving yet humorous drama about a son who finds himself in acute crisis when his mother is hit by senile dementia.
Poul is an actor with a busy career doing commercial voice-overs. He is recently separated and his wife has moved away with their little boy, when his mother starts showing the signs of senile dementia. He can only stand by and watch helplessly as she is gradually overcome by the disease. At the same time we see flashbacks to a time when both the world and the roles of the characters were very different. Then…. slowly, while his mother disappears into her own world – and into her childhood dream of becoming a ballet dancer – he manages to find the courage he needs and with it the happiness of what was and what is.
The theme of senile dementia is handled with empathy, levity, not to mention humour, making for a performance both moving and evocative, even for those of us who have not had direct experience of the disease in our lives. For the performance is about much more than dementia: it is about (family) relationships, about roles in life and especially about ‘loss’, one of life’s fundamental realities and something human beings find so hard to accept and relate to. Above all, it is a story full of hope, happiness and the will to live life.
Author, director, designer: Giacomo Ravicchio
Artistic collaborator, script translation and adaption: Elise Müller
Choreography: Anne Kurtzweil
Cast: Claus Maack Bahnsen and Elisabeth Befrits
Technician: Per Aagaard
