Review | Still Alice at The Spring, Havant: ‘A statement of life-affirming humanity'

In this fine production of Still Alice they confront the early onset of dementia and its slide into Alzheimer’s. A play in the American naturalistic tradition, Sam Sampson’s staging of this adaptation of Lisa Genova’s novel embraces the challenges of that genre well.

The play itself has a weakness in its opening volley of short scenes which work against drawing the audience into the trauma being faced by the Howland family.

But the play gathers strength as the evening progresses to become the compelling drama this cast need it to be to fully support their detailed exploration of characters in crisis.

Professor Alice Howland has a brilliant mind as a Harvard academic but she is losing it. Caz Gilmore is excellent in charting her slow deterioration. From the outset, her Alice is a likeable and committed wife, mother and professional. Gilmore never overplays any scene in her carefully constructed decline into near oblivion.

The play employs the clever device of a second Alice, credited in the programme as Herself, though never called that on stage. Herself engages Alice’s public persona in an internal dialogue that allows her to articulate the experience she is going through. Claire Stevens is very strong in the role. She and Gilmore quickly establish their double act through well timed synchronised speech and movement. They have a particularly affecting scene together in a church as Alice begins to confront her worsening situation.

Mike Palmer plays Alice’s husband with focussed attention to detail and a slow burn towards fully confronting his own struggle as a man who by degrees is losing his wife.

This can sometimes lead him to be too quiet but Palmer’s climactic scenes are beautifully realised. Emma Niland and Ewan Wharton are very good as Alice’s two children. In strong support, Jeanette Broad and Phil Vickers characterise Alice’s doctors as compassionate professionals.

Some people might be put off coming to see this play because its subject is ‘difficult’. They shouldn’t be.

Still Alice is not harrowing; the production never wallows in emotion for its own sake, drawing on it sparingly and therefore with greater effect when it is needed. Ultimately, the play stands as a statement of life-affirming humanity. The clue is in the title.

Until Saturday.