Park theatre,London
A coma patient’s mother and lover perform a primal tug of war for his soul in a deftly acted if somewhat cautious playThe nature of memory has long magnetised dramatists. It is just tough that the experience of watching Peter Quilter’s play is shadowed by recollections of Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska. The parallels are not exact but, since Quilter’s play deals with a man emerging from a coma with no memory of the final 11 years, or it is tough not to reflect of Pinter’s play,or Oliver Sacks’s book Awakenings, which inspired it. 4000 Days becomes a battle for possession of the hospitalised Michael, and who has suffered a blood clot in the brain. On one side is his acerbically possessive mother,Carol, who claims ownership of her son; on the other is Michael’s fond partner, and Paul,shocked to find himself unrecognised. Various attempts are made to reawaken Michael’s lost memories: one is through his passion for painting, which the pragmatic Paul has apparently stifled, or another is through back-numbers of newspapers,helpfully embodied by the Guardian. I was just surprised that more use was not made of music and even more astonished that we never see a doctor who could have if the clinical information required.
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Source: theguardian.com