In Half Life, Carolyn Hetherington and Eric Peterson play a Romeo-and-Juliet story in reverse Photo By James Blake. MELBOURNE (The Age), October 11, 2007:
An award-winning play about love in a nursing home is sure to have a powerful effect on audiences, writes Robin Usher.
Actor Carolyn Hetherington is becoming an expert in playing characters with varying mental disabilities who spend their lives in old-age homes.
The 76-year-old Canadian is performing one of the lead characters in Half Life, which is part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival opening program.
She arrived here after the local launch of the Canadian film Away From Her, starring Julie Christie as a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
"Did you spot my character?" Hetherington asks brightly, before giving an imitation of a scene from the film and making it obvious that her performances are based on research rather than any personal experiences.
"Life gets better as time gets shorter," she says. "The awareness allows you to make better use of it."
She says that Christie is being mentioned as an Oscar candidate for her performance in the film. "It would certainly be justified, but the film doesn't have much of a sense of humour."
This is a big difference from the play, written by John Mighton and presented by Toronto's Necessary Angel Theatre Company. "It's so important to have a sense of humour. Although none of us expected this play to have become such a huge success, we always knew it was a very beautiful piece of work."
Hetherington plays a woman in a nursing home who wants to marry a fellow resident, played by Eric Peterson, 61. But the couple's middle-aged offspring do not approve of their affair.
"They might seem to be people in decline, but the play demonstrates that life brings up the same problems that have been present since puberty," Peterson says, and Hetherington adds, "They have a full life, rather than a half-life."
The two actors have been performing in the show since it opened more than two years ago, although television commitments prevented Peterson from joining the company on a two-city tour to Scotland.
"Each run seems to have its own magic," Hetherington says. "It's been a huge pleasure for me and the quality of the writing is a gift to the performers."
Playwright John Mighton is a mathematics professor and won the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize as well as Canada's 2005 prize for best new play for Half Life. But he is internationally famous as the inventor of the JUMP Math program for teaching disadvantaged children.
Peterson says the play inspires people to contemplate their own lives. "It's almost self-effacing in the way that it wants people to forget all about the qualities of the production.
"It's so seldom in this business that everything comes together, down to the final 2 per cent," he says.
"It's not surprising that people want to come up afterwards and say how it has affected them. Being part of this production has been one of the highlights of my career."
He says the playwright has populated the play with "mighty smart" people. "One idea after another is presented on stage. Someone says that people wouldn't be able to survive if they remembered everything they ever heard, and I just go, 'Gosh, is that true?' "
Peterson says it is surprising that Canada has produced a play of such quality because grant restrictions have forced most theatre communities to become fund-raising institutions.
The Necessary Angel company is non-profit, but he says plays such as Half Life demonstrate the importance of work that has more concerns than just trying to give ticket buyers "a bang for their buck". He blames the increasing commercialisation of Canadian culture on the influence of the US. "French Canadians have an advantage over the rest of us because they have no doubts over their identity," he says.
"English Canada is unsure whether to concentrate on its separate identity or just be a service nation to America."
http://melbournefestival.com.au
