The Promise – Lyric Hammersmith, London

Writers: Paula Garfield and Melissa Mostyn

Director: Paula Garfield

When dementia hits a family member, it can be devastating for everyone involved. In the case of The Promise, James Boyle’s Jake returns to his estranged family after the death of his father, to discover that his mother’s vascular dementia is highly advanced. Thrown into the role of a carer for someone he has not truly forgiven for the schism that occurred between them, Jake struggles to work out long-term care, a task made harder by the family’s deafness.

Time slips abound in Paula Garfield and Melissa Mostyn’s script for Deafinitely Theatre, both as a means of exploring the shifting relationship between Jake and his parents over the decades and also as a reflection of the loosening hold on the present by his mother, Rita (Anna Seymour). This allows the source of the conflict between Jake and his parents, precipitated by his coming out in the 1980s and with a father (Louis Neethlin’s Mike) who expresses the sort of homophobic sentiment so prevalent at the time, to be a thread that is pulled at throughout.

But mostly, this is the tale of a strong woman brought low by a condition that is slowly eating away at her dignity, and a social healthcare system that struggles at the best of times and has little to no capability to deal with deaf older people facing dementia. We see Jake struggle with finding a suitable care home for a mother whose first language is BSL rather than English, a requirement that local authority social workers blithely dismiss.

Much of the play is BSL-first, and the translations into spoken English result in a script which is slower, more direct and less flowery than plays written by and for hearing audiences might be. This results in a more deliberate pace to the piece overall, although it allows moments of heightened panic to hit harder.

Through the use of sign language and creative captions alongside English, Garfield and Mostyn emphasise how the heartbreaking nature of dementia becomes so much worse when compounded by other factors. Seymour helps convey this with a touching performance that conveys a strong, loving wife and mother whose connections to the world disappear faster when subtitles become harder to understand, and those providing her care cannot communicate with her in her first language.

Boyle brings pathos to the role of the gay son who has to overcome the pain caused by his parents’ estrangement, while Neethling brings elements of charm to a role that needs to be loving whilst also hurtful. Together with Erin Hutching in a variety of supporting roles, the overarching theme of The Promise is to remind us that BSL is not English, and to assume that care workers will be able to just pick it up is supremely insufficient for the needs of people in Rita’s shoes.

Above all, it is a profound call to action, to ensure that elderly care in this country can and does cater for everyone’s needs. When dementia finds its way into a family, we all deserve a social care system that doesn’t make matters worse for anyone.

Continues until 11 May 2024