Continuing the Every Third Minute Festival, The Playhouse host touring company Theatre Re to explore memory and identity in The Nature of Forgetting, stopping in the Courtyard Theatre where Leo Owen caught the show

TO research The Nature of Forgetting, London-based Theatre Re, worked with UCL’s Neuroscience Professor and interviewed elderly members of the community, alongside those living with dementia.

About the fragility of life, actor and writer Guillaume Pigé’s play follows Tom, preparing to celebrate his 55th Birthday while living with early onset dementia.

A clothes rail of costumes opens up like a stage curtain to reveal a square platform behind surrounded by school chairs/tables and the ensemble with the band behind. Tom’s daughter, Sophie (Louise Wilcox), organises clothes for her silent father and a voice-over depicts him attempting to remember her words before failed attempts to follow her instructions lead to flashbacks.

The rest of the production is a blurring of memories as they seep into one-another, moving from school scenes with his childhood sweetheart to his graduation, wedding and in action at work.

Combining highly physical theatre with mime, tableau and freeze-frames, Pigé’s play inventively illustrates the impacts of dementia, forcing adults to become vulnerable and almost childlike again, in the early stages painfully aware of their degeneration but powerless to slow the process and stop memories completely fading.

Through movement, structure and music, Pigé creates a kind of dreamscape.

Glitches in Tom’s memory are shown through sound with music distorted, slowed and sped-up.

Flashbacks are repeated several times and jumbled together as Tom sifts through memory, attempting to recall the information he requires.

The lights brighten, all clothes are violently ripped from the rails and actors discreetly speak into microphones, reprising earlier lines, at the height of Tom’s frustration and disorientation.

Like memories to someone with dementia, objects/furniture are constantly moving out of reach and Tom is shown attempting to run backwards, perhaps hoping to return to happier times.

Although only 75 minutes long, The Nature of Forgetting does occasionally feel a tad drawn-out with some excessively long dramatic pauses.

Pigé’s cast fluidly slip in/out of costumes and he is most convincing playing young Tom full of wonder. Composer Alex Rudd’s live music is reminiscent of Sigur Rós, particularly affecting and the show’s strength.

Taking their name from the prefix “re” to symbolise re-discovery and re-imaginings, the company undoubtedly create clever and captivating theatre, serving up a satisfying conclusion.