Forever Young Review

Forever Young is a show set in Nottingham Playhouse, forty years on and has been changed into a residential home for aged actors. There are six residents and one carer. The actors are playing themselves in forty years’ time. The carer only visited about every fifteen minutes and in between this time the residents sang songs from their younger, days  - smoking, drinking, dancing and reminiscing their past. They sang a few different songs like I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, Forever Young, I Will Survive, Respect, Barbie Girl and I Got You Babe and many more.

The set for the show had an old looking feel and shabby. The items on stage had not been specifically made for the show, they had been found. The only pieces that had been made were three paintings of people linked with the show. It was not were not explained who they were, but they appear in the program. The set wasn’t changed throughout the show. On the stage there was a piano with a stool, three armchairs, a settee and a book shelf.

The “carer” likes to spend her time patronising and humiliating the residents. She wore two different costumes, a white medical coat and under the coat she wore a red turtle neck and high black boots with a black mini skirt. She also wears a black, seductive evening dress to sing a ‘song’ but she just kept repeating different words about death and graveyards.

All the elderly characters were dressed quite smartly for their weekly sing-a-long. The first older character was a foreign man that played all the music for the show on the piano; he didn’t speak English throughout the show. He wore a light brown suit with a tie and white shirt. He only played the piano so I didn’t find out to much about his character. Next to him was Marcus, he was not dressed as smartly as the other characters, he wore a red dressing gown with brown cuffs and neck, a white shirt underneath with brown trousers and a tweed trilby. He carried a gold fish in a bowl with him and was quite a proud man. His costume suited his personality because he didn't look scruffy at all but didn’t look smart. Next to him is Mrs Little, she was quite a short person with a big personality. She was wearing a blue black lace dress with white lace gloves, a tiara and a dead ferret round her neck. Sat on the settee was a married couple, he wore a navy suit with a grey jumper underneath and she wore a flowery skirt and a matching scarf with a blue cardigan. The last character was not smart at all he wore messy joggers, a scruffy shirt and a tatty brown waist coat.

Overall I felt the play had quite a serious message of how old people are put into the situation of living in a residential home and that people need to rebel from time to time.

I wrote this for a play I went to see in March and thought it would be a good idea to put it up. More about the play.