Inside Out of Mind

 

The Ward with No Name is a curious place - where books flutter as birds under a canopy of firing synapses, sisters are what they seem at first and where we see some of the inside on the outside. The ward, the setting for Tanya Myers and Meeting Ground Theatre Company's Inside Out of Mind, is an assessment centre for dementia patients although it has quickly become a what resembles a refuse centre - where patients with this debilitating disease are left, to alleviate the pressure of having them in other wards. This knock-on pressure is huge on the staff who work there, with whom we gain a huge amount of insight and sympathy, and the patients, many of whom will never leave despite the ward's designation. One of the Health Care Assistants says "we're an assessment centre - we weren't designed for end of life care". 

The Health Care Assistants, HCAs, and other staff are our narrative route through this play, and their continued "all changing" as they come and go on their shifts. They are joined by Youth, an ethnographer looking into the practices of the ward. Any notion of her being a Stockmann-esque whistle-blower or going through some huge transformative story arc is not the concern of  Inside Out of Mind. The play, particularly the first act, is brave as very little happens as far as narrative goes - snippets such as the Senior Ward Sister becoming a grandmother or a Staff Nurse being proposed to and getting cold feet. This lack of event is one of the strongest elements of the show. All we see, as an observer on the ward - like Youth - are the snapshots of lucidity interspersed with the confusion of the patients.  

 

The second act however is over-full; it has more narrative set pieces such as the escape of a patient and a direct address section in which the actors speak to the audience as themselves - it's powerfully emotive but comes in an odd place in the act, about halfway through, and clunks in the way it's woven in. There are other stronger and more compelling moments of drama in the text than this agit-prop. 

The piece also suffers from a few false endings - all with greater presence than the one which eventually does end the piece - such as when Robin Simpson's health care assistant Keith finally speaks out about the shit these workers have to put up with or when Grace tells us how she has a ritual of opening the window when one of the patients passes, linking in nicely with the books as birds image which recurs throughout.  

In the script there's also an over-reliance on French. Patient Mr Proust is always searching for his metaphorical petite madeleine and we get flashes of Nabokov quotations in the little office window. Are these snippets from patient Anna's memory, a retired librarian, and are they, as they sometimes felt, a little worthy and over wordy? 

Actors Maxine Finch, as pious nurse Grace and confused patient Elsie, and Jim Findley, HCA Raj and Tom, the struggling husband of patient Anna, stand out in the strong ensemble cast. Lighting designer Richard Statham and digital media designer Barret Hodgson deserve a special mention too for their clever, tech heavy creating of the inside of the mind on the outside: a swirling maelstrom of brain impulses and the other brilliant projections.