***A Conversation With Carmel, Barrowland Ballet, Remarkable Arts.
A tender synthesis of movement, film, a spirited community ensemble and one very cute baby.

There is an authenticity to this fine piece of physical theatre which goes beyond its inclusion of projected interviews with real people and an untrained community ensemble. Natasha Gilmore’s entrancing choreography distorts and abstracts bodies and objects, but in all its abstraction, A Conversation with Carmel reveals moments of intense insight into what it is to be human, to be a grandparent, a child, a mother, a sibling, a lover. Age provides the lens through which a life is examined, as relations gather for Carmel’s 80^th birthday party.

Carmel is 83-year old Diana Payne-Myers, whose flexibility would at times put an acrobatic nineteen-year-old to shame. At the other end of the spectrum, Gilmore’s one-year-old son could hold an audience’s gaze all on his own as he toddles, giggles and reacts instinctively to the onstage action. Spirited members of the Barrowland Ballet community ensemble flood the stage at significant moments, and provide visually the sense both of fun and of shared personal awkwardness in public festivities, as they dance here at Carmel’s party. The glee and bashfulness in their faces are entirely genuine, but I found these legitimate reactions far more interesting to observe than had their performances been entirely polished, their conviction complete. Meanwhile, projection of film by renowned film-maker Rachel Davies is seamlessly woven into the action. Everyday objects – the tables and washing lines of Jamie Harrison’s mutable set - become screens upon which interviewed pensioners offer up their own experiences of age, grandparenthood, life and death. Their honesty is striking, the pictures painted often a far cry from cosy family life.

While the central theme of cyclical existence is explored onstage with detail and scope, the play flails slightly in its dramatic focus. Scenes transition with fluidity but the overall through-line becomes fainter towards the play’s conclusion, for example when a tableau of Carmel’s deathbed is constructed and dispelled within a few beats. The proximity of death is naturally an unacknowledged but tangible presence throughout - Carmel’s relations fussing over her in her grand old age at her birthday. But this strong physical manifestation is somehow too literal, unnecessary. The play’s climactic sense of ‘dancing towards one’s end’ is resumed as grieving relatives are whisked away and Carmel once again twirls and boogies on a table-top, contented and childlike as the lights fade down. Significantly for a play of such a title, Carmel never says a word; but there is no doubt that this tender play speaks volumes about the emotional impact of ageing upon the individual.