“Another Home Invasion,” a one-actor play written by Joan Macleod, stars Roseann Wilshere and is being presented at Bare Stage this weekend. If you are under the impression that Bare Stage “is only a readers’ theater,” their newest production will make you think again.
Jean (Wilshere) is an elderly woman who cares for her husband, Alec, in the home they have shared since 1950. We learn quickly that Alec has physical problems and cognitive deficits that create an exhausting caregiving challenge for his wife. Jean has her hopes pinned on the two of them moving to a Kiwanis retirement home there in Vancouver; they have been on the waiting list for 27 months.
Jean tells us a story of a shifty “fellow” who rang their bell one day Tuesday in May. Jean’s encounter with him on the porch was disturbing but relatively harmless, leading only to a bruised wrist. But she thinks it could have been worse, “another home invasion,” she says, that they would talk about on the CBC. As she tells this story, we hear about their children and their visiting nurse, Claudia, in whose hands Jean believes their move to the Kiwanis rests. Jean struggles to make her and Alec seem sufficiently needy for a retirement home, but not so needy that more advanced care is required.
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