Presented by Lung Ha Theatre Company in association with Luminate
Bob has lost something important, something that might make him happy, he just can’t remember where he left it. He’s absolutley sure it isn’t in the care home where he is living. He suspects it may be in his house but his nurse can’t take him there and Bob is in a wheelchair so escape is difficult.
Gemma and Cap visit Bob and want to help him but before they can finalise their plans Bob takes matters into his own hands.
Watched by a sophisticated security device and a resourceful nurse, Bob, Gemma and Cap race against time and Bob’s failing memory to locate the thingummy and restore happiness.
Writer’s Note:
When Maria Oller asked me to think about writing a play that would be included in Luminate, a Festival that celebrates creativity and aging, I was pretty sure the answer was going to be no. There were so many conditions attached to the piece that I was afraid I’d feel hemmed in and unable to explore. I told her what I tell everyone who asks me to write a play about a specific theme or subject: that I would give myself two weeks to live with the idea and if I had no answering response I would let her know. In the meantime I went along to meet some of her actors as they were rehearsing Morna Pearson’s Jekyll and Hyde and was amazed by them. I went home, went to sleep and woke up before morning with the whole thing in my head, as if it had relished the constraints. It was a singular lesson for me, as I embarked on a play about dementia, to understand just one of the ways our creative minds cope with restriction. I think of it now as a gift.
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh: 29 – 31 October 2015 (Matinee on Friday 30)
Eden Court, Inverness: 03 November 2015
Platform – The Bridge, Glasgow: 05 – 06 November 2015
Thingummy Bob
Reviews
“In Linda McLean’s Thingummy Bob – gorgeously directed by Maria Oller, with music by Philip Pinsky – the part of Bob, an ageing dementia sufferer living in a care home, is played by Lung Ha’s star John Edgar; and around him circle a fine cast of supporting actors, including Emma McCaffrey as Gemma, the old friend’s daughter who is his only visitor, and a terrific Karen Sutherland as both his niece in faraway Australia, and the thinking hospital security camera that monitors his every move.”
Joyce McMillan – The Scotsman