By Jay Menard

Rob Gee brings a unique perspective to the stage, as a comic, poet, and psychiatric nurse in Forget Me Not — the Alzheimer’s Whodunnit.

Gee is eminently appealing, genuinely funny at times, and clearly a clever writer. The play itself is a pleasant diversion — it has moments of uproarious humour at times, but also devolves into repetition at times. It’s funny, entertaining, but — at the end of it — it’s not something that’s going to stay with you.

The story focuses on a series of unexplained and apparently violent deaths on a dementia ward. Gee embodies multiple characters through the play and gives them all their own physicality and voice. It’s a classic whodunnit, seen primarily through the eyes of a former police officer who, himself, is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

The best part of the play comes from Gee’s detective character, brought in to solve the murders. He masterfully mixes up common idioms in rapid-fire fashion and draws laughs from the crowd. Unfortunately, like many of the tropes in this play, it goes on one too many times. It’s hilarious the first time, funny the second, but by the third time, we’re ready to move on.

There’s a moment, at the end, of incredible poignancy, but it’s delivered as a bit of black humour and not given the attention it deserves. It feels like a missed opportunity to hammer home, in an entertaining way, the challenges we face with how we treat our aging population.

Overall, Forget Me Not is enjoyable. It’s just not particularly memorable.

*** — three stars out of five.

This review originally appeared on theatreinlondon.ca