The right-to-die debate rouses just as many passions now as it did in 1987, when this drama by Stephen Bill, who subsequently won the Standard’s Most Promising Playwright Award, opened. But while the topic itself blazes, this rather static production unfortunately does not.
It’s the 86th birthday of Ida (Sandra Voe) and her family has gathered to help her celebrate. There’s an oppressive atmosphere of false/forced jollity, as her daughters try to get her to eat cake. Ida, wheelchair bound and in acute pain, has had enough. Yet will anyone be brave enough to give her the gift she truly desires, that of blessed relief from her suffering?
The first half of Lindsay Posner’s unsettled production paddles in the shallows, not aided by an unconvincing subplot about the return of prodigal youngest daughter Susan (Caroline Catz); we fear that we will get neither to know nor care sufficiently about any family member. Things perk up in the second, when right-to-die discussions take centre stage, although there are still only fitful bursts of real conviction.
Ida is less a character than a talking point, which is awkward. There’s lovely work from Marjorie Yates as stoic neighbour Mrs Jackson; for all the daughters’ brow-furrowing, it’s this dignified older woman who has kept the whole situation stable for so long.
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