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“Don’t forget me, okay? Funny to say at a memory clinic” says Gus Cudahy (Gordon Clapp) to his partner, Pru Payne (Karen MacDonald), as he leaves the very place where they met. Words exchanged between loved ones, memory and the loss of it, contradictions, and funny statements are some of the key elements of “Pru Payne,” an original play written by Steven Drukman and directed by Paul Daigneault. It might be a play, yet it feels like a poem: One full of alliteration and rhyme, a reminder of the fragility of identity within a story about forgetting.
In the middle of the stage of the Roberts Studio Theatre sits a white, circular platform. This platform, a creative, versatile prop, functions as the care facility for people with memory loss, but also the podium where Pru — short for Prudence — accepts an award. The protagonist, who lends her name to the play, is a sharp, Upper East Side elderly woman who has turned her unrivaled wit and eloquence into a career as a critic. In her acceptance speech, Pru seems confused, forgetful, and blunt — even more than usual. She describes the AAAA — the American Academy of Arts and Aesthetics — as an “acclaimed, august assemblage of alcoholics” in one of her many memorable alliterations. This behavior prompts her son and only family member, Thomas Payne (De’Lon Grant), to take her to the clinic. What is meant to be a short stay in order for doctors to run tests proves to be Pru’s new home as her memory loss progresses rapidly.
Alternating scenes between the two settings on the same platform help the audience grasp Pru’s vivid personality as well as her decline in health over time. Karen MacDonald, exceptionally graceful and energetic as she is, immediately earns love and in the rare moments where she is not on the stage, her absence is noticeable. Pru’s brilliance must also be attributed to Drukman’s fast-paced, engaging script, where repetitions like “dismembered” and “remembered,” juxtaposition of homonyms such as “Payne” and “pain,” and rhymes — “Lapse? Perhaps!” — express the playwright’s verbal brilliance. “Pru Payne” builds a strong narrative of a woman who is seemingly indestructible and proceeds to shatter it with a realistic, merciless account of disease, summing up to an incredible emotional experience.
The play also explores themes of love and familial relationships, offering a nuanced examination of how change in identity impacts them. As Pru loses her memory and herself, she finds love in Gus, an elderly New England man who happens to be the custodial engineer of the boarding school her son went to. “Gus, drives a bus, one of us” is the memory trick Pru learns to remember his name through, and eventually he becomes so much more than that phrase. Gordon Clapp’s performance is genuine and tender, beautifully complementing Karen MacDonald’s character.
Gus offers Pru calmness, stability, and many laughs during their time together at the clinic. This is an improbable love story, one between an intellectual and an unschooled, intuitive man whose paths would have never crossed. As Pru loses herself, Gus is by her side to teach her the beauty of not thinking all the time. Their love story, which is interrupted by Gus’s discharge, is a truly original concept for a play that takes place in a clinic.
While the relationship between the protagonists develops, visits to the clinic and Pru’s need to see Gus again bring together their sons, Thomas and Art Cudahy (Greg Maraio), who are also former classmates. The play deftly develops their complicated relationships with their parents and the loneliness of slowly losing one’s only family member. Thomas, an aspiring author himself, sees his mother as a role model and often seems to care about Pru’s progress in writing her anticipated memoir more than he does about her condition. Grant finely brings to life a character who lives in the shadow of their parents but lacks the confidence to escape it, as love and admiration become tangled in his dependence on his mother. Maraio portrays a simple man, similar to his father in terms of his manners and New England accent, who struggles with his recent divorce and with making ends meet.
Following the protagonists’ separation, Gus claims that Pru deserves to be remembered at her best and ignores her request to see him. His disappointing choice is one of the first developments of the play that causes frustration. Years later, the play shows a future with Thomas and Art in the epicenter, who have now accepted the fate of their parents’ illness. While the fact that their sons are coping is hopeful, the way that it happens makes things unnecessarily complex and takes the spotlight away from the relationship between Pru and Gus.
The set of “Pru Payne” is simple yet effective in transforming the stage into a cold clinic where a love story develops despite all odds. Meanwhile, performances are strong and authentic, with MacDonald stealing the show. What truly stands out is the play’s rhythm and the script that is rich in creative language, which is why the ending leaves a bitter feeling that distracts from all the important messages of “Pru Payne.” This raw, honest perspective on memory loss serves as a reminder that people — and not thoughts or stories — are all we can hold onto in times of need, and thus, all that matters.
“Pru Payne” runs at the Roberts Studio Theatre through Nov. 16.
—Staff writer Olga Kerameos can be reached at olga.kerameos@thecrimson.com.
