Mabel’s Last Performance : Beautiful Study of a Mind Losing Its Bearings.

A most beautifully written monologue by a surprisingly young and obviously talented Megan Piercey-Monafu.  Mabel, a “young sixty” and  former actress whom we meet in a nursing home,   is preparing to don a beautiful costume, walk past the nurses and disappear into the night!  Her final performance! “Heroes” comes to mind but it evolves in a different way.

Mabel, slowly floating away into Alzheimer’s, is caught in her own mind   where  beautiful memories, confused dreams,  theatrical characters and a shifting present  show us  that she is  drifting  somewhere in a complex in-between reality that recreates its own special links with the world.  She dialogues with her former lover, as easily as she does with Nina (the Seagull), Cleopatra (Shakespeare) Joan of Arc (Shaw) and Hedda Gabler (Ibsen) and with Susan in the Nursing home, who comes and goes but who’s “reality” is not any more obvious than that of the theatrical characters who have lived with Mabel her whole life.

A most beautiful study of  a mind slowly losing its bearings, aided by Ian Tamblyn’s haunting music that resonates as a voice  beckoning from some faraway place.

Kathi Langston throws herself with great passion into this performance as she captures the shifting tones of a mind recreating itself.  This is however, a piece that should eventually be performed in a professional setting…GTCT? NAC? And in that case some work would be needed with a director who has more distance from the material. More delicate modulation of an extremely energetic character that does not quite betray her vulnerability. As well, more thought should be given to the way the music adds its voice to what in fact becomes a dialogue with the actress.

Mabel’s Last Performance is a beautiful moment of theatre at the Fringe. Definitely worth seeing this one.

St. Paul’s Eastern United Church.  473 Cumberland.

Mabel’s Last Performance

Reviewed by Alvina  Ruprecht, Iris Winston and Jamie Portman

Written and Directed by Megan Piercey-Monafu

Performed by Kathi Langston

Music by special guest artists Ian Tamblyn