Abstract
I heard the warning bell ring as the usher handed me my PlayBill. This would be my 45th visit to a Broadway theater, and the first show to evoke anxiety and fear before being seated. The plot line was simple: dying with advanced dementia strips a person's autonomy and independence. This hit too close to home. My mother, at the age of 52 years, began losing her memory, her personality, and her self. Now eight years later, she feels like a different person to me. I track her as she navigates the restaurant to ensure she does not become lost on her way to the restroom. My father gently guides her hand to the fork as she struggles to use her knife to spear her chicken. When I saw the names of the award-winning star-studded cast of this revival play, I did not jump to watch a show reminding me of the heartaches of caring for someone with dementia. Yet, here I was, waiting for the show to begin.
The Waverly Gallery, a finalist of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, officially opened on Broadway on October 25, 2018, and closed on January 27, 2019, at the John Golden Theatre in New York City. Kenneth Lonergan's masterpiece of familial relationships and the ravages of chronic illness follows Gladys Green, a grandmother and an art gallery owner in New York City, as she and her family grapple with her progressive dementia. The Broadway revival play opens unassuming and simple—slightly dull. Gladys, played by Oscar nominee Elaine May, sits across a young man in his early 20s in her small art gallery in Greenwich Village, ranting about how the neighborhood has changed over the decades. The surrounding streets of the iconic neighborhood are now overrun by drug dealers and immigrants she retorts. As the minutes tick, I find myself as uncomfortable as the young man fidgeting across the desk in the middle of the small art gallery. Awkward is precisely how Director Lila Neugemauer wanted me to feel in the opening scene. Lucas Hedges, an Oscar nominee who plays Gladys's grandson, exquisitely portrays the discomfort of watching your senile grandparent seemingly forget your presence in the room as their diatribe falls to deaf ears. Throughout the 2 hour and 15 minute play, this discomfort and frustration with interacting with a loved one with dementia haunt Gladys' daughter, son-in-law, grandson, and neighbor.
In the first act, Gladys attempts to maintain her routine of running her art gallery. Her family and the audience question whether her struggles come from bad hearing aids or from the early signs of dementia. Her daughter and son-in-law, played by Tony Award winners Joan Allen and David Cromer, demonstrate willful ignorance through their mantra of “let's talk about it tomorrow.” A silver lining of humor is introduced through the character of Don Bowman, played by Tony Award nominee Michael Cera. As Don accepts Gladys' offer to care for the art gallery in exchange for room and board, the audience laughs as his sentences end with a bad pun or fall onto an awkward silence, lightening the mood of an otherwise intense display of human behavior.
As the play progresses, the humorous moments of Gladys losing her keys or failing to sell the art due to her rambling turn into a heart-wrenching realization that her behaviors stem from advancing dementia. Her daughter struggles, unable to share in her mother's sorrow and unable to seize the opportunity to plan for the future while her mother is still cognizant. Instead, she speaks over her mother when her conversation becomes nonsensical, treating her mother like a child, leaving Gladys frustrated and angry. As Gladys' memory slips and her disease affects her ability to clean herself or safely live alone, she moves from her beloved apartment to the basement of the family brownstone in the Upper West Side. I wince as Gladys struggles to communicate through words her frustration with her debilitating illness. Instead she becomes hysterical, unable to understand why her family would take away her autonomy and her dignity.
As the curtains closed on The Waverly Gallery, I vigorously applauded. I found an unexpected comfort in knowing that the feelings of frustration, anger, sorrow, and isolation are a universal experience for patients with dementia and their families. Sometimes, finding humor in the darkness can also be healing. As a daughter of a beautiful kind woman who too early developed Alzheimer's disease, the play truthfully demonstrates how this illness shapes families. As a physician, the play taught me that we must help our patients and their families communicate and plan for the realities of this disease. Having these hard conversations can prevent the patient and family from suffering silently.