Hand Over Fist

It takes a monumental effort not to break down in tears at the end of Hand Over Fist, writer and comedian Dave Florez’s new play about Emily, an elderly woman coming to terms with Alzheimer’s. That’s not to say it’s manipulative or sentimental – far from it. The monologue is littered with expletives, sexually explicit anecdotes and dirty jokes. But through a combination of Florez’s sharp writing, deft direction from Hannah Eidinow and Joanna Bending’s gut-wrenching turn as Emily, its humour crescendos into an agonising finish.

 The audience starts off just as confused as Emily. As he showed in his 2011 hit, Fringe First winner Somewhere Beneath it All, a Small Fire Burns Still starring comedian Phil Nichol, Florez favours an obscure-and-reveal style of drama. We follow Emily’s turns of clarity and confusion carefully, as she tries to relate a story about the first time she met a lover. It’s like someone has opened a door into the mind of an Alzheimer’s sufferer, and the audience is engulfed in the unedited stream of thoughts as they occur.

Bending is exquisite, striking a great balance between being flippant, funny and agonisingly sad. Eidinow’s hand is also evident. In the past, she’s seen acclaim for directing plays with tragedy at their centre—2011’s real-life euthanasia story An Instinct for Kindness, and Lockerbie: Unfinished Business in 2010—as well as Florez’s Somewhere Beneath It All last year too. But ultimately it’s Florez’s writing, which refrains from sentimentality without ever losing sight of Emily’s tragedy, that shines brightest, marking him out as a serious dramatic talent.