Take Off your Cornflakes – Education Theatre, Our Lady’s Hospice – Saturday 19th May 2018
Rose Henderson and Pat Nolan
TAKE OFF YOUR CORNFLAKES By Rose Henderson
A Show in a Bag Production created by Rose Henderson and Pat Nolan
Directed by Liam Halligan
Who am I without my past? When we go out of our mind, where do we go? Take Off Your Cornflakes is a portrait of a marriage, and yet, a love story! Tom and Trish have celebrated their silver wedding anniversary but what happens when he wakes up with a strange woman beside him and she tells him she’s his wife? She chooses to enter his world, armed only with humour, music and love.
Of course there is loss with dementia, but what matters is how we deal with our losses and our gains. When Trish accepts that it is possible for her to enter Tom’s world instead of constantly dragging him into hers, she finds relief. Trish has to learn how to accept his new reality, and chooses humour and imagination to survive without losing her own sanity.
Rose is a comic actor (Sister Assumpta in Father Ted) and Pat Nolan played Barry in Fair City for nearly 20 years. This play is inspired by her Dad, Jack, who was an engineer who had Alzheimer’s and couldn’t remember he had Cancer. “He taught us about staying in the present, because that’s where he lived. We had to learn to never ask a question that didn’t have the answer in the room. His intelligence made life a crossword puzzle to be solved. I believe humour is the only way to survive, if the topic visits you.”
Laughing in the face of death is a choice. This is a play about love. You will laugh, you may cry, but you will find a very beautiful and moving piece of theatre.