Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Layers
Doublet
Genre: Drama, Experimental, New Writing
Venue: Assembly Roxy
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
By repeating a fragment of a day over and over until the pieces stick together like a vase being broken in reverse we are introduced to the confusion and isolation of a dementia sufferer. Using film, performance and spoken word Layers is based on the family life of the Japanese actor and videographer Yuuya Ishizone, and is an attempt to show the impact of dementia on the whole family.
Review
A ticking clock, a barking dog, a gentle piano score, a grey gauze screen at full stage height. Behind the screen a figure all in white calls the name Max repeatedly, speaks in fragments, long pauses between each sentence, a fridge door is opened but no food is taken out, moving slowly, drifting, the sense of being underwater heightened by the gauze, . Then a discordant long note and the scene becomes more animated, the man now young holds a new born baby, we think it is a new born baby, the baby is shown proudly, declared to be a boy, a new start for the family.
And then scene stops. A clock ticks, its hands move backwards through 10 minutes. A film is projected, on screen showing the old man entering, he calls Max, Max. And then a second , real, person comes on stage, a woman (maybe) all in white. Now some of the gaps in the conversation are filled in by her dialogue, not that the old man reacts logically to her input.
Scene break, clock rewind, projection of the old man and woman, live actor playing son joins the scene. Repeat until the family is complete with a daughter and, it turns out, a puppy not a baby. Now we can make sense of the short story – an older man has dementia, his family try to carry on as normal, the family dog is lost. But there is still the sense that each performer has only been given their dialogue, not the rest of the script, there is always a hesitancy before speaking.
The play is based on a true story. The writer, performer and videographer Yuuyu Ishizone divides his time between Japan and Edinburgh. In both the homes he lives in the father has dementia. He has come up with an ingenious and delicate way to show us the impact on the family, starting with the confusion experienced by the father. Practically the projection is a neat way of telling a story which has a cast list of four humans and one dog using only one live performer (all the budget allowed).
Layers is a brave experiment that works in part. The gauze, aside from its practical use as a projection screen, makes the action seem muffled, as words and actions might be to someone with dementia but the practical impact on the audience is that expressions are harder to read. This frustrated me and I longed to draw the curtain back. . Yuuyu is a native Japenese speaker, English is not his first language. On balance his accented English lends itself to the struggle we have to make sense of what we are hearing, which neatly reinforces the alienation of dementia for the father. However at times more clarity in speech from the rest of the family would have helped understand the family dynamics which are part of the plot. The ending was too saccharine for my tastes but the creator said he wanted to offer hope.
Layers is a moving story told with sensitivity. Hopefully with more sophisticated equipment and without the constraints of a small venue get in and strike restrictions it can develop further. It deserves to.
