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‘We’re trying to die well,’ says the father, Gene, in this play about dementia, family ties and shuffling off this mortal coil. Death is something that scares most of us but, suggests writer Kevin Kautzman in ‘Dreams of Perfect Sleep’, wouldn’t it be better if we gave it a little more space, thought and preparation?
It’s Christmastime and Gene and Mary’s adult kids are coming home to celebrate. Robert is a divorced, 40-year-old ex-addict who rarely sees his own children while Melissa is a pot-smoking New Age healer. Not the recipe for a happy reunion, then, but it turns out this get-together was never going to be plain sailing. Mary’s dementia has become much worse, Gene has suffered a relapsed with his cancer, and the two of them have decided on a drastic course of action.
Not to give away what happens, but the bombs are dropped early on in this witty, insightful but flawed play. The drama comes from Robert’s unwillingness to accept Gene and Mary’s decision and his struggle to face something that, to the other three, feels natural, if frightening. Cory English is convincing as the tired, grouchy, disappointing son. The strained relationship between his Robert and Martin Wimbush’s Gene is developed very well over the course of the play.
Mary’s dementia is frequently hallucinogenic. At one point Susan Tracy’s Mary disappears into her imagination, morphing into a lucid ‘Queen of Heaven’ en route to hanging out with Hades. But the way Kautzman drops in these sections is jarring, and director Max Pappenheim doesn’t help with some clunky staging. Mary’s visions feel too contrived to slot neatly into what would have worked just fine as a straight-down-the-line family drama.
In fact, Mary’s dementia feels almost incidental; really, this is a play about letting go and trying to see the Grim Reaper as a little less, well... grim.