JADAR

★★★★☆

Deafinitely Theatre’s The Promise takes on the rarely explored connection of deaf people living with dementia and deconstructs the flaws of deaf education in the UK, while touching on the parental rejection of a gay son.

Memories and past moments are weaved into the present narrative, of Jake struggling to cope with his mother’s new dementia diagnosis; representing Rita’s perspective and how she sees the world, muddled and a mixture of the past and present.

After coming home, for his father’s funeral, a neighbour, Jane (Erin Hutching), who had been checking on Rita (Anna Seymour), admits that she had seen a host of symptoms in Rita and that she needs to see a doctor. This throws Jake (James Boyle) into a spiral, after growing apart from his parents as they didn’t attend his wedding, because he was marrying a man. The rest of the story follows Jake as he struggles to cope with becoming his mother’s carer, the lengthy diagnostic process for deaf people living with dementia, alongside the devastation of placing a parent in a care home. The cast is rounded off with Louis Neethling as Mike.

The Promise is an extremely visual show, using captions and the majority of the production spoken in British Sign Language. A variety of projected video and images to define emotional themes such as the cherry blossom, often appearing across the stage during Rita’s recalled memories.

Paula Garfield and team worked closely with the British Deaf Association and a host of consultants, which was unsurprising as Rita’s story felt incredibly sincere.

Potentially something that I noticed was the looping of a few piano tracks in the middle of the show, which felt repetitive and at times unnecessary, especially when compared to latter brilliant audio design used, such as buzzing and various atmospheric sound, which worked really well to induce a sense of immersion.

The piece ends (spoiler) with Jake, (James Boyle) at his mother’s funeral, remarking that “she promised” and discovering that she kept her plane ticket to his wedding destination for multiple years in her purse- revealing that she had in fact wanted to attend the marriage, before exiting.

While this was an extremely emotional juncture, it felt abrupt, and despite this may have been intended to mirror the unresolved feelings that Jake felt towards his mother, potentially there could have been a better route taken to end such a moving narrative.

However, Anna Seymour’s (Rita) performance was moving and there wasn’t a dry eye left in the audience by the end of the show after her poignant representation of how deaf people are given improper attention and communication within care homes in the UK.

James Boyle, the first deaf man to study at RADA, makes his stage debut. His portrayal of a frustrated son was both measured and powerful; he adeptly communicated the anger and heartbreak of having to care for a distanced mother, and mourn a father who wasn’t supportive of his identity.

Learning from this piece that there is currently a single care home in the UK providing proper care for deaf people was devastating, and it is essential that deaf issues are spoken about far more often, and these stories are represented within the theatre. 

The Promise runs at Home, Manchester (Theatre 1) until April 27 before wrapping up its UK tour at Lyric Hammersmith, where it runs from April 30 to May 11.