Ramesh Meyyappan’s critically-acclaimed, poetic and emotional evocation of the challenges of dementia and the deaf community, Love Beyond, comes to the Lemon Tree next month.
Fresh from a run at the Edinburgh Fringe where it won the Leading Light award for the Best Scottish Production at The Scottish Theatre Awards On the Fringe 2024, the show will visit Aberdeen on Thursday, September 5 and Friday, September 6.
Love Beyond is not a typical love story. Harry, who uses sign language to communicate, suffers with a form of dementia which can cause hallucinations. His wife passed years before and being on his own social care workers organise ‘end of life’ palliative care for him in a hospice. As he moves into his new home, he is accompanied by memories. Events from the past seem newly present; a “visit” from his wife rekindles their love - he imagines they are young and together again. Harry’s carer provides him with some solace, but just as the determined nurse begins to learn Harry’s sign language, he begins to forget it, leaving him in a unique world where he must confront the only thing that remains – himself.
Aberdeen Performing Arts Director of Programming and Creative Projects, Ben Torrie, said: “This wonderful production offers a unique perspective and insight for hearing and deaf audience members alike, bringing together themes of shared human experience as well as some of the greater challenges faced by the deaf community. Emotive, creative and deeply moving, we are proud to be co-producing Love Beyond in association with Raw Material-Vanishing Point and presenting it at the Lemon Tree this September.”
Ramesh said: “For audiences to develop empathy they have to feel the frustration often felt when what is communicated is misunderstood or not understood at all.
“Many of us deaf face the challenge every day of making our language seems less foreign to others. Harry has faced that challenge his whole life and now his own language becomes foreign to him as his sign frame begins to diminish as the dementia takes hold.”
Featuring a cast of hearing and deaf actors, the award-winning Love Beyond played to sell out houses on its Premiere at the 2023 Manipulate Festival and was performed at the 2024
Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Made in Scotland showcase. The original cast - Ramesh Meyyappan (Old Harry), Rinkoo Barpaga (Young Harry), Elicia Daly (the nurse) and Amy Kennedy (Elise) – is reunited for the performances which will once again be directed by Vanishing Point’s Artistic Director, Matthew Lenton.
Love Beyond is a Raw Material-Vanishing Point co-production in Association with Aberdeen Performing Arts.
Tickets are on sale now from www.aberdeenperformingarts.com, phone (01224) 641122 or visit the box office at His Majesty’s Theatre or the Music Hall.