Just a heads up that I am already a huge fan of Human Story Theatre (HST), and their predecessor Saturday Matinee Company (SatMatCo), so this review will be a rave one. For those who have not come across Human Story Theatre before, they are a company that “focuses on new plays with a health and social care issue at heart”.
At the centre of their latest (and first post-pandemic) offering, Lizzie On the Fence, is Lizzie (Renata Allen). Married to Bill for forty years before his advancing dementia meant that he had to move into a care home, Lizzie faithfully visits him for hours each day. Then Covid-19 hits and she is left out in the cold, literally and metaphorically. The programme provided calls this show a "black comedy about lockdown love", and there is no better way to describe it. Allen’s performance as Lizzie is both heartbreaking and hilarious, and without any staging the audience is transported to the car park outside the care home her husband is in, with its shrubbery and the eponymous fence depicted so well in the script and acting.
Written by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, the play draws on her own experience and information she gathered from others in the same boat during the pandemic. Tackling the difficult and somewhat ignored subject of rights for those in care, and their loved ones and care-givers, the play is beautifully constructed, balancing heartfelt sentiment and very realistic circumstances with dark humour and commentary on the state of care post-pandemic.
Supporting Allen on stage were Tom Grace, playing the stressed out interim care home manager, Nathalie Barclay as Flick, Lizzie’s stressed out hospital worker daughter and Alexander Mushore, a jogging student with a different agenda, who manages to incur Lizzie’s wrath.
Despite the fact that this was a staged reading, rather than a polished off-script performance, the sold-out audience were fully engaged, with lots of laughter and more than a few surreptitious wiping of tears. This is all down to the excellent combination of writing and performance, and I cannot recommend it enough.
As with all HST performances, there was a Q&A panel after the show, with engaging and occasionally heated discussion between panelists Professor Mary Daly (Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at Oxford University), Nicci Gerrard (writer, journalist, campaigner and co-founder of John’s Campaign) and the aforementioned writer of this play, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. Audience members had the opportunity to join the discussion and it was clear that a few of us were leaving the performance with a fire in our belly about the subject.
HST are hoping to fund a UK tour of the show and as it has already been ‘catalyst for an important debate with MSPs and Care Home Relatives Scotland in October 2023’ I truly hope the crowd funder set up allows a wider audience to see this fantastic and important show. There is also a petition for Care Right UK’s Care Supporters Bill which can be found here.