An Ivy league professor (Madeleine Potter) reveals herself to us in slices at Traverse Theatre. She is 53 years old, unmarried, no children. Sadly, suffering from stomach pains, she is diagnosed with stage 2 cancer, having malignant tumours. She describes watching her mother’s life ebb away at the age of 54 of neurofibromatosis. At the end, her mother did not even know her own name and was an unrecognisable shell of the woman she had known. Her own diagnosis would be devastating enough, without this emotional recall.
A fine production, dealing with loss, isolation and the notion that humans can surprise and evolve.
As a creative writing practitioner at Yale, she understands the value of and need for structure. So when one of her students (Christopher, played by Eric Sirakian) pointedly refuses to follow edicts, she finds herself counter-intuitively drawn to his disruptive nature.
He is a talented writer, albeit unconventional – he is clearly not a man of his era, sending letters and using a typewriter. He is also truculent, but she nonetheless remains intrigued and a friendship of sorts develops, possibly predicated on their mutual status of being outliers, neither of them having a surfeit of friends.
He has an idea for a novel but without conventional structure. She encourages him. They have dinner and he confesses that he loved her novel, published 17 years previously. Christopher is significantly more interested in books than lovers, revealing his absence of tactility. But a moment follows, underlining his contrarian status, when he touches her face.
Her diagnosis deteriorates: she has scant probability of survival. She researches assisted suicide, makes necessary arrangements, but needs a partner in crime to fulfil the act. She asks Christopher to help. While initially disconcerted, he agrees to co-operate if she reads his novella first.
But will either of them prove to be good to their word? There is a touching denouement.
Adam Rapp’s script is sharp and unusual. Matt Wilkinson’s direction simply gives Sirakian and the outstanding Potter space to develop their unconventional relationship, serving a metronomic function at the core of the production. The pace, initially slightly languid, goes through gears later.
This is a fine production, dealing with loss, isolation and the notion that human beings can surprise and evolve.
