The Shape of Things Undone, Audio Drama, Brighton Fringe Festival

The saying ‘still waters run deep’ can aptly be used to describe Lita Doolan’s audio play The Shape Of Things Undone. Beneath its quiet, understated simplicity lies a profound meditation on having dementia, the emotional toll caring for such people round the clock, as well as the systemic underappreciation of those working on the ‘front line’. One could describe the play as ‘cut from the same cloth’ as Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, with its attention to detail of the mundane, its darkly comic undertone, as well as the layers of loneliness, grief and societal isolation. At the play’s heart is Christine (Julie Broadbent), who is working the night shift at Hawthorn Care Home. The matter-of-fact description of heating a cold sandwich in the staff room’s microwave at 4am underscores the abject misery and separation from the world at large. As Christine mulls on her surroundings, we learn that the care home is in a transitional phase – from caring about the elderly to focusing on genome…