Dying of cancer is no picnic but there is nothing morbid about Nichola McAuliffe’s life-affirming comedy Maurice’s Jubilee. In fact you feel like cracking open the champagne to celebrate a life well lived.
I had reservations about the play before attending the press night at Aylesbury’s Waterside Theatre. Both my parents died of cancer, the critic from The Stage sitting next to me had recently lost a relative to it. Is there anyone who hasn’t been touched by the pain of losing someone to this horrible, indiscriminate, of diseases?
So would we find it funny?
The play opens in a shabby suburban living room.
Maurice is 89-years-old and dying from a brain tumour, several, in fact. His wife, Helena, is in denial and his son has escaped his father’s withering disappointment in him by emigrating to Australia. The collapse of various banking institutions has robbed the couple of their nest egg and they are now living in a poky bungalow in Penge after being forced to give up their luxury mansion flat in Barnes.
Enter nurse Katy with her patronising, nursey, voice and eternally optimistic smile to help Maurice through his final months. Despite their obvious social differences she becomes his confidante.
We eventually find out that the former jeweller was involved in the Queen’s coronation and, on the night before the young Princess Elizabeth succeeded to the throne, she made him a promise to visit the diamond expert on his 90th birthday.
No-one believes the tale but its constant retelling drove a wedge between the elderly couple.
Now Maurice is facing death. Will he even make it to his 90th ? And if he does, will he get a royal visit?
What lifts the story is the writer’s wicked sense of humour and the fleshing out of Maurice’s character. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that pensioners had a life before they became old. In this case he was a jewel expert working for one of the world’s top institutions; he collected works of art, was well read and well-travelled. He’d lived a full life and his story seems entirely believable.
McAuliffe, who honed her medical skills in the TV series Surgical Spirit, plays Katy with conviction. As a writer she refuses to let Maurice feel sorry for himself and he’s forever telling self-deprecating jokes. There’s no time for pity or maudlin behaviour. In fact there’s a bit of a black side to our Maurice.
Julian Glover (a spring chicken at 77) plays the pensioner with dignity and fortitude (although, it has to be said, he doesn’t look anywhere near 90). There’s one speech just before the end of the first Act and you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. The engrossed audience hung on his every word.
The tiny Sheila Reid gives a wonderfully restrained performance as Helena. She’s spent most of her life living a lie but now and again we see glimpses of the heartache that she has endured.
A tremendous, thought-provoking and surprisingly funny look at old age.
Maurice’s Jubilee is now touring.