British writer-director Alexander Zeldin’s work is “a damning dossier about society’s most vulnerable”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph.
In “Beyond Caring”, he wrote about zero-hours workers; in “Love”, about people living in temporary accommodation, and in “Faith, Hope and Charity”, about users of a community kitchen. Yet Zeldin is not a baldly political writer: in everything he does, he emphasises the “complex humanity” behind the headlines – and he does that “magnificently” in this new play. Set in the sterile meeting area of a nursing home for the elderly, “Care” is a “profoundly moving, beautifully acted portrait of life, and death”. It had me gripped and left me devastated.
This is “theatre at its best”. Linda Bassett is simply superb in the central role of Joan, a newcomer to the home, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. Initially, Joan insists that she is there only temporarily; Bassett depicts her moving “from courage to despair to a sort of staring acceptance of her fate, conveying whole worlds with a raise of an eyebrow or the touch of a hand on a cheek”. There’s “unbearably touching” work, too, from William Lawlor as her teenage grandson, lost in his own despair at his father’s death.
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There are “darkly sublime” performances from the actors playing the other residents, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. We don’t learn much about some of them; they just “shuffle on and off again”. When they die, the lights come up gently as they join the audience.
“Care” is a compassionate and powerful play but, having spent some time in care homes myself, I had misgivings, said Nick Curtis in The Standard. The play derives some comedy from rambling, criss-crossing conversations; yet “old, infirm people just aren’t this funny and even those in extreme distress aren’t this consistently sad”.
With no interval, this heartbreaking piece is quite gruelling, said Clive Davis in The Times – and the last scene is a bit melodramatic. Still, if you feel “drained” by the end, you will also feel “quietly grateful”.
