Darkly funny Shakespeare remix set for Cork

A new play told from the viewpoint of a person living with dementia but through the familiar lens of Shakespeare’s King Lear will be in Cork for two nights next week.

Following the national and international tour of ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’, award-winning theatremaker Dan Colley and his company have turned their sights to ‘Lost Lear’, a very (very) loose adaptation of King Lear.

The play, which comes to The Everyman on 24 and 25 October, is a moving and darkly comic remix of Shakespeare's play told from the point of view of Joy, a person with dementia, who is living in an old memory of rehearsing 'King Lear'.

Joy's delicately maintained reality is upended by the arrival of her estranged son who, being cast as Cordelia, must find a way to speak his piece from within the limited role he's given.

Using puppetry, projection and live video effects, the audience are landed in Joy's world as layers of her past and present, fiction and reality, overlap and distort. 'Lost Lear' is a thought provoking meditation on theatre, artifice, and the possibility of communicating across the chasms between us.

Susan Crampton of Dementia Carers Campaign Network describes the play as “a captivating journey, from an energetic and rambunctious beginning to the poignant and gentle end”.

“It portrays the bewilderment of someone who wants to care, trying to have the shared experience with the person living with dementia, struggling and sometimes failing,” says Susan.

She adds: “I am delighted to hear that ‘Lost Lear’ is on tour and many more people will have the opportunity to see it for the first time - or again.”