This trendy Granny went to Islington to see an all women play based on King Lear. Lear's Daughters is set around the presence of a King who isn't really there and it is the empty wheelchair that sets a Granny thinking because the whole play is set around that empty space. The all women theatre company, the Footfall theatre are impressive, their footfall is quietly powerful: whilst using Shakespeare's words they weave the story from their own perspective as Lear's inheritors. They are inheritors not just of his kingdom but of his welfare. He has handed his kingdom and himself over to them in the vain hope that the gift will insure his future. But they and we are facing the whole question of caring for the older person (the Grandparent!!) especially now when the grandparent is likely to live for some time. While you watch the play, you are thinking that the wheelchair is empty, you are with the daughters dealing with the content of the wheelchair, they have their different stories as you do about their life in relation to the old man, he is an object with needs but his existence isn't his own, it belongs to them, the inheritors. But they have their own lives with their own problems and their own tendencies to contend with. And it suddenly dawns on you, that you and everybody else is the person or will be the person who inhabits the wheelchair. And it suddenly dawns on the daughters that they have killed their own humanity in dealing with Lear as an object.There are going to be so many of us grannies and grandpas shortly because we will be kept alive and we may be thinking we deserve good treatment because after all haven't we given them our kingdoms whatever that kingdom may be? BUT what will they do, the inheritors, they won't know that the empty wheelchair is waiting for them as well, they won't necessarily know that this is "the promised end" So if you are free over the next week or so, get along to the Hope Theatre and feel yourself edging towards the empty wheelchair.
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