Angela Bassett as Joan in Care [Johan Persson]

ALEXANDER Zeldin has adapted and updated his 2022 play Une Mort Dans La Famille, resetting it in a contemporary UK care home. His blistering, heartfelt examination forces us to look into the abyss that can accompany old age.

Single mum Lynn (Rosie Cavaliero) and her sons Laurie (William Lawlor) and Robbie (Charlie Webb) install Joan (Linda Bassett) in a residential home that feels like incarceration. Having suffered a fall, and convinced her stay is temporary, her memory loss gradually reveals she can no longer live independently.

Joan is surrounded by others who, like her, long for home, familiarity, and human warmth. She is befriended by Simone (Hayley Carmichael), one of the youngest residents, with a chequered past, and John (Richard Durden) who, missing his late wife, forges a fleeting but tender connection.

Llewella Gideon is the formidable nurse Hazel, trying to rally spirits with songs and activities, holding everything together with the support of Fanta (Aoife Gaston), while working increasingly long shifts.

Zeldin lays bare the realities of end-of-life care, the loneliness and despair, but his two-hour production also celebrates human resilience. There is humour in Joan’s exchanges with her grandsons and in the unexpected friendships she makes in her final days.

Played out on Rosanna Vize’s evocative set, Care doesn’t flinch from long, uncomfortable silences, and Zeldin creates striking tableaux of the residents. There is comfort in the idea that the dead remain with us: he places characters in the auditorium, or has them return onstage to offer ghostly solace to the living.

The entire cast is superb. Anyone who has cared for a relative or witnessed a parent’s decline will be deeply moved by this powerful evocation of today’s residential care sector, the fading out of a loved one and the light and shade of our farewells.

Until July 11
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