Love Beyond, the award-winning Raw Material-Vanishing Point co-production in Association with Aberdeen Performing Arts written by Ramesh Meyyappan, will be performed at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe as part of the Made in Scotland showcase.
The critically-acclaimed, poetic and emotional evocation of the challenges of dementia and the d/Deaf community previewed on Monday 12 August at Assembly (Gordon Aikman Theatre, George Square) at 2pm.
Following the Edinburgh performances the production will tour Scotland.
The original cast, which brings together deaf and hearing actors – Ramesh Meyyappan (Old Harry), Rinkoo Barpaga (Young Harry), Elicia Daly (the nurse) and Amy Kennedy (Elise) – will reunite for the 2024 performances.
The production will once again be directed by Vanishing Point’s Artistic Director, Matthew Lenton withBecky Minto (Set & Costume Designer), Simon Wilkinson (Lighting Designer) and David Paul Jones(Composer).
A journey begins from a moment in the past – a memory revisited rekindles a love thought gone…dead.
“Harry is going back to a place he fell in love with – Scotland’s West Coast, in the hope of rekindling the love he had with his wife.
“He’s confused and doesn’t understand why she left, they’d spent their lives together, ever since they first met in the idyllic setting of Ardnamurchan, they’d known little time apart,” says Ramesh.
“When she left, Harry’s life became too confusing, he found he couldn’t look after himself, he forgot things and became increasingly vulnerable as new people came into his life and made him feel like a stranger in his own home.”
“Harry’s journey is not what he thinks it is, but nothing anymore is as he imagines it to be.
“Leaving his home for a new one in the search for answers from his wife, he is haunted only by memories until the reality leads him to his own end, the end of his journey, of his life.
“Meeting his wife once more, the love returns (it never left) as does the pain of her suffering – she is sick and Harry is unable to look after her, just as he is unable to look after himself.
“They say love heals, but Harry can’t accept that, his incompetence in caring for her disturbs him and he needs some persuading to stay with her – love is not always enough.
“Until Harry accepts the inevitable, he will be haunted by her and unable to be with her.”
Love Beyond is not a typical love story.
Harry, who uses sign language to communicate, suffers with dementia – (Lewy body 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.
While in care his confusion increases with haunting memories from his wife’s suffering and moments where she appears ‘fine’.
In his confusion he imagines they are young and together again, rekindling their love.
He struggles accepting his inevitable end of life, confusion becomes increasingly disturbing as do the visits with his wife.
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.
“For audiences to develop empathy they have to feel the frustration often felt when what is communicated is misunderstood or not understood at all,” says Ramesh.
“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 his as his sign frame begins to diminish as the dementia takes hold.”
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