Writer: Christina Castling
Director: Jonluke Mckie
We should all care a lot more about those in care. Christina Castling, a former care home receptionist, brings us a play that aims to make us do exactly that:Beyond Caring is a delightful, intimate, and often heart-breaking representation of life in a care home. These facilities, the play argues, are often places where people are left behind, forgotten about – but the characters inBeyond Caringare difficult to forget.
At the heart of the play is Queenie, played with great depth and dignity by Judi Earl. She’s a pension-age Bartleby the Scrivener, refusing to do what she’s told. Like Herman Melville’s Bartleby, her motto is “I would prefer not to”; Queenie stages a “sit-out” of the home, shivering on a cold bench outside, refusing to move or speak. Her character is at once absurd, inspiring, comical and desperately serious. Earl’s performance brings out all of these contradictions, flitting between friendly and defensive, always retaining the fierce individuality of Queenie.
Queenie’s heart-warming (and hand-freezing) attempt to cling onto a little space of freedom is a statement about the ethos of a care home in general. These places are under-resourced, chronically short-staffed, and over-full. But the staff still try, against the odds, to provide their residents with a respectable life and a dignified death. During an intense sequence, Alex (Rosie Stancliffe), a care worker, does her best to answer all the ringing bells, to give everyone in the care home the time and attention they need, almost single-handedly; this results in mess and humiliation, but what can she do? As the play highlights, new recruits never last long, because the pay’s higher at Amazon and people don’t want to think about themselves getting old.
The play confronts us with the realities of old age – and, while certainly a sentimental drama, this play doesn’t romanticise those final years of life. Death looms large in the care home, inevitable and yet still somehow unexpected in each arrival. Alex makes various attempts to ease the process of dying for the residents and their relatives, but the restrictions of the care home make this a messy and unmanageable task (as Alex says at one point: “I wasn’t trained for this!”). These moments in particular highlight the dramatic talents of Rosie Stancliffe, who balances the moralising authority of a manager, tutting and crossing her arms, with the loving vulnerability of the rest of the cast.
There are more characters than cast members here, but the actors rise to the challenge of multi-role casting deftly. Particularly impressive is Jaqueline Phillips, who plays, on the one hand, a much more care-free care worker than Alex, and on the other, a worried woman who puts her mother into the care home. These both contrast one another; the former shows an approach to care that assumes the residents can more or less look after themselves, while the latter shows a deep suspicion of exactly that idea. Phillips’ most moving moments of performance come from this latter role, as she navigates anxiety, grief, and newfound friendship. On top of all of this, Phillips also plays a care home resident with a love of Bob Dylan, a Queenie-like free spirit who sings of times a-changin’.
Covering a great many different aspects of the care home, from the lives of residents, to staff, to the home life of residents’ relatives, this play is a great challenge of staging, especially with a small cast. But Jonluke McKie’s direction manages to convey the changing scenes and keep us aware of exactly where we are in the story, through the use of lighting, costumes and props. The use of singing adds a real transcendent power to the play, and small moments of movement are wonderfully symbolic, like the moment where Queenie is wrapped in warm blankets, allowing her to prolong her risky rebellion, which is also an act of unconditional kindness.
After the crisis in care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic, public awareness about what really goes on in these places is badly needed. Castling’s play is a vital contribution toward humanising those elderly people our political system is all-too-ready to forget about. Beyond Caring is undeniably written, directed, and performed, with a great deal of care.
Runs until 5th November 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Inspiring
