It’s no small task to mix broad comedy and a serious subject like Alzheimer’s disease. The Black Rep’s new show DOT, by Colman Domingo, attempts, and, for the most part, succeeds in doing so. Moreover, it manages without poking fun at the disease or the person who has it.
Everything else, however, is fair game.
It’s 10 a.m. the day before Christmas Eve and Shelly (Jacqueline Thompson) is pouring herself some vodka when her mother Dotty (Thomasina Clarke) comes into the kitchen for breakfast. In the carefully-crafted first scene, even though we know what’s coming, watching it unfold is still magnetic. Shelly, an attorney complains she can’t get her siblings to help with their mother. Dotty seems quite lucid, just a little forgetful and prone to repeat stories, and who among us couldn’t be described that way at times?
Eventually a clearer picture emerges of what’s actually going on. The middle child, Donny (Chauncy Thomas), a musicologist, comes home for the holiday with his husband Adam (Paul Edwards). He hasn’t been answering his sister’s phone calls about Mom, and since they live in New York, he isn’t at all up to speed on the situation. The other sister, Averie (Heather Beal) lives in Shelly’s basement – but since the sisters aren’t speaking, Shelly’s mostly at Mom’s anyway and Averie hasn’t been to Mom’s in ages herself, there’s another knowledge deficit. She does, of course, appear, in a blaze of overwhelming self-assuredness. Mom’s fine, the newly-arrived siblings say, Shelly’s just exaggerating because she’s lazy and doesn’t want to do anything.
Indulge me a little here. When I worked in an intensive care unit, and later as a nursing supervisor, I used to mutter about a character I invented called “the daughter from San Diego”. This person, male or female, would appear, not having seen their loved one go through the tribulations of illness and aging or the incremental losses the hands-on family members had seen every day. The aging patient was exhausted, we were doing everything we could, and the DFSD would roar in, insisting that the family was wrong, the patient would wake up, and not enough was being done. (And in the years I wasn’t working in the ICU, I saw plenty of Alzheimer’s.) Some people insisted the DFSDs were that way because they felt guilty. Mostly, I believe, it was just because they didn’t understand. Eventually they (usually) saw the reality of the situation.
So I’m here to tell you, these characters in DOT are real. All of them. Yes, there’s exaggeration, even some stereotyping. And there are some really funny lines, but that’s the way life is in the middle of this sort of thing.
It’s a strong cast, well chosen by director Ron Himes, the founder and producing director of The Black Rep. Thomasina Clarke is marvelous in the title role. Even her head moves are perfect. Thompson’s Shelly slowly unrolls her character, and Heather Beale as Averie is hysterical in a role that a friend of mine described as “the daughter you’d like to slap”. Thomas, strong as usual, has a lot of conflicts going on in his life, and the appearance of his high school girlfriend, their former neighbor, endearingly played by Courtney Elaine Brown, adds to the chaos.
The set at Washington University’s Edison Theatre feels very right, from the slippery throw on the sofa to the light going on inside the frequently-opened refrigerator. And special kudos to stage manager Jim Anthony who I suspect is responsible for the fried chicken that’s a prop. The aroma reaches at least the first three rows.
Is this a drama or a comedy? The St. Louis Theatre Circle is going to have to decide one way or another. Much of the humor is very broad. But I never had the feeling it was making fun of a difficult situation. And if it gets some folks to look at the people around them with more kindness and less judgment, it’s definitely a winner.
One more thing – parking on campus is more complicated than it once was. On The Black Rep’s website, there’s a link to the campus parking map.
DOT
through September 24, 2017
The Black Rep
Edison Theatre at Washington University of St. Louis
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