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Dementia drama lacks emotional impact
Moving: Sharon Small in Still Alice
[Geraint Lewis]
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Still Alice
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
BROUGHT to mainstream attention by the 2014 film starring Julianne Moore, Lisa Genova’s debut novel Still Alice is being staged at West Yorkshire Playhouse as part of Every Third Minute, a festival that investigates what it means to live with dementia.
Christine Mary Dunford’s adaptation is low on theatrical drama or grand gestures as it follows the story of Alice (Sharon Small), a successful linguistics professor who’s diagnosed with early onset dementia. Other than the presence of her inner voice Herself (Ruth Gemmell), the play aims for realism as Alice becomes increasingly confused as she finds herself “living in a mixed-up Dr Seuss world.”
She is the cornerstone of her family, but the relationships with her husband and two children are tested as she goes to work in her dressing gown and gets lost in her own home.
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