There seem to be a great number of plays in London about mental health issues at the moment. Distance at Park 90 and Dust at Trafalgar Studios 2 deal with suicide. The Height of the storm opening soon at the Wyndham's is by the same author as The Father and both deal with dementia. Each while explaining the illnesses deal very dramatically with the impact of the sufferer’s condition on friends and family. It is a very worthwhile topic feeding the debate about how to support sufferers but also lends itself to dramatic treatment.
The Other Place by Sharr White at Park 200 is the latest to tackle the subject and is the best of the bunch in exploring the symptoms and impact on the lives of the families of those suffering these illnesses in a totally engaging and dramatic piece.
Juliana is a witty intelligent neuroscientist who has patented a drug that mitigates the effects of dementia and now lectures and promotes it to groups of medical practitioners. Her husband Ian is an oncologist and therefore has some understanding both of her as a person and the science she promotes. The play brilliantly explores through a series of flashbacks and memories their life and the development of the illness. It first becomes apparent as she lectures for the umpteenth time on her topic to a conference in St Thomas in the Virgin Islands and she has what she calls an "episode".
