Moving, funny You Will Remember Me explores memory, identity and youthful idealism

Kevin McNulty and Sereana McNulty in You Will Remember Me. Tim Matheson photo.

For people whose lives and families have been touched by dementia, You Will Remember Me is bound to hit a chord.

A personal and moving play from Quebec playwright Francois Archambault, You Will Remember Me has won acclaim in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Beginning this week, Vancouver’s Ruby Slippers theatre company is remounting their version, which was a hit in 2015 at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, at Gateway Theatre (6500 Gilbert Rd., Richmond) Feb. 2 – Feb. 11.

In the play, aging intellectual Edouard, who is afflicted with dementia, is shuffled between caregivers. Questions arise about what remains of a person once his or her memory has failed, but also about a community’s identity when its collective memories fade.

As a 2016 review in the Globe and Mail recounts, “You Will Remember Me is as curious about collective memory as individual memory – and perhaps the most amusing scene comes when Edouard, after reliving his vivid recollections of the night the Parti Québécois was first elected, asks Bérénice, born in 1996, what she knows of René Lévesque. ‘He smoked a lot – all the time – and he was short and practically bald,’ she says, then describing his comb-over in detail. The look on Edouard’s face is priceless, but Archambault’s exploration of a generation’s forgotten idealism is the most poignant part of his play.”

Kevin McNulty plays Edouard in Ruby Slippers’ You Will Remember Me at Gateway Theatre Feb. 2-11. Tim Matheson photo.

The review goes on to call You Will Remember Me “a complex work of art – funny and moving…” Vancouver theatre critic Colin Thomas said of the 2015 Ruby Slippers production: “There’s a kind of genius in You Will Remember Me. Director Diane Brown and her team do an excellent job with this script.”

For more info and tickets (starting at $29) to You Will Remember Me visit gatewaytheatre.com.

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