CARE

Writer-director Alexander Zeldin rose to prominence with a trio of plays – LOVE, Beyond Caring and Faith, Hope and Charity – that served to expose the fraying social fabric of Britain in the austerity era. They were powerful, important works with a lo-fi, documentary-like intergrity to them. They were also pretty bloody depressing, it has to be said. But after a departure from social realism, CARE is an intriguing turn of events. It follows an elderly grandmother (Linda Bassett) who takes a fall and moves into a retirement home by her exhausted somewhat against her will. But by the sounds of it, this isn’t a gloomy story of despair, but rather one of hope, that celebrates retirement homes as positive places. Of course, there’s still plenty of wiggle room to talk about the parlous state of social care in this country, but it sounds like a refreshingly non-doomy focus.