Paula Garfield and Melissa Mostyn
Deafinitely Theatre
HOME, Manchester
April 25-27, 2024: 1 hr 15 mins
Deafinitely Theatre, the UK's first professional deaf-launched and -led theatre company, has been working in British Sign Language and spoken English for more than 20 years.
The company need have had no qualms about attracting an audience to this show, which was packed out in HOME’s smaller theatre – the majority applauding with “jazz hands” and many clapping their appreciation at the end.
The Promise tells the story of Rita, a school head teacher who was a brilliant pioneer in deaf education in her day. Through a series of flashbacks we see how she met her husband, Mike; how their son, Jake, realised he was gay and found the love of his life, and and how Mike could not come to terms with that.
Rita never rejected her son, and the one thing he longed for was that she should be at his wedding to his partner, in Amsterdam. The system beat her in the end as she tried to travel on her own, and she never made it.
Rita develops dementia after her retirement, and after Mike’s death Jake comes home for a while to do his best to see that she is cared for. Only one care home in England caters for people who use BSL, and that is in the Isle of Wight, and full up. Jake, still torn by his perception that his mother made and didn't keep her promise to see him marry, is up against another system.
The show is based on a true story, and in truth the scandal it shows is one that affects the hearing as well as the deaf. The agonies of realising a loved one’s memory is slipping away, having to label everyday things about the house for safety, seeing them repeat themselves over and again, deciding when the time has come to seek for help, negotiating the assessment procedures of social services departments and finding a place within the care system that’s adequate to the task, are common to many.
Directed by Deafinitely Theatre’s founder Paula Garfield, the production is straightforward and unpretentious, and the acting excellent. Anna Seymour (Rita) is also a dancer with Candoco Dance Company and beautifully expressive; James Boyle, the first deaf man accepted into RADA, makes his stage debut as Jake; Louis Neethling is Mike; and Erin Hutching is Jane, the heroic good neighbour who has cared for Rita but can’t go on doing it for ever (she and James Boyle also double as other characters).
Some dialogue is spoken as well as signed, and some is projected as text alongside evocative visual imagery created by Ben Glover.
The bilingual nature of the enterprise means there is a limit to how fast the pace can go, and the story inevitably has a pessimistic ending. But that’s the truth about dementia.
More info here
