Hand Over Fist

Pleasance Courtyard
1-27 Aug

This new monologue from Dave Florez poignantly tackles the issue of Alzheimer’s through a neat structural device.

Joanna Bending plays Emily, who recalls in Groundhog Day-fashion her first meeting with a lover.

The twist is that with each recollection her memory fails further; “I don’t know what’s real or not at the moment” she tells us, and indeed, neither do we. As we leap between sketchy recollections the worlds of reality and fantasy become increasingly blurred.

Director Hannah Eidinow choreographs Bending’s movements beautifully, including a graphic description of fisting that seems at once bizarre and yet strangely at home here. And the final visual coup may be somewhat hackneyed but nevertheless serves to underline the seriousness of the central subject.

It’s a struggle to follow the action clearly throughout, but in some way that’s the point. As Emily tells us in another tidy turn of phrase, “nothing’s worth remembering” anyway.

Further evidence that Florez (whose other play at the Fringe this year is the starrier The Intervention) is a writer to watch.