'Pru Payne' explores love amid memory loss at SpeakEasy Stage

In everything that the award-winning wordsmith Prudence “Pru” Payne does, she seeks to be excellent. The long-time critic at the center of Steven Drukman’s fervent play “Pru Payne,” showing through Nov. 16 at SpeakEasy Stage Company, is at the zenith of her career when memory troubles arise and threaten to dismantle her reputation and her life.

Played by a skillful Karen MacDonald, Pru is a master linguist who has extolled or denigrated many as a reviewer. At the show’s onset, she and her son Thomas (a kind and expressive De’Lon Grant, who was terrific in SpeakEasy’s “A Case for the Existence of God”) sit in dark chairs atop white linoleum floors, a circle of lights above them. They’re in a waiting room eager to see if the doctor can help. Pru lost her place onstage at the 1988 Abernathy Award ceremony, and her son is desperate to nip it in the bud. Pru has a memoir to write, after all, due in the fall of 1989.

MacDonald radiates as Pru in Drukman’s beautifully written and insightful narrative, packed with purposeful and poetic alliteration. MacDonald’s list of theater credits is long, and it’s clear why. She recently portrayed another character with memory loss in Gloucester Stage Company’s “Wipeout.” In “Pru Payne,” MacDonald has the chance to show off more of her acting chops as the complicated disease progresses over time. While getting in-patient treatment, MacDonald’s Pru meets Gus, a less educated custodial engineer with a thick Boston accent. Portrayed by a hilarious Gordon Clapp, Gus has his own challenges, but it doesn’t keep him from singing and living life to the fullest. And, of course, the cerebral Pru and Gus fall in love and have fun in the facility’s confines. Pru lets loose with Gus leading the way, but their story — just like Pru’s memory — is fleeting.

Paul Daigneault adroitly directs this excellent production, brimming with nostalgia. The play delves into love, intellect and memory loss and also provides a bit of cultural commentary that carefully reminds theatergoers of the challenges of the time, from gender politics to epidemics. For example, Pru’s verbal prowess spurs ire from her peers and causes one conservative critic, Hilton Kramer, to say, “Pru Payne is the paragon of persnickety prudishness.”

But Pru quickly added when recounting the story to Dr. Dolan (a reliably good Marianna Bassham), “See, to a conservative critic like Hilton, a woman should not demand excellence but be content with ‘just good enough.’ In a man, to demand excellence is gravitas. In a woman, frigidity.”

Through speakers, the audience hears a mix of music and soundbites that move us through time from 1988 to 2008, like “The Price Is Right” theme,  President George W. Bush’s famous “fool me once” line and the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Thomas references the AIDS epidemic when talking about how he once had suitors. “Funny how an epidemic can make them disappear,” he says.

The production’s spare set design, by Christopher Swader and Justin Swader, allows for the gifted cast to really lead the story, which is augmented by the soundboard operator Maria Papadopoulos, audio describers Cori Couture and Andrea Doane and videographer Kathy Wittman. Aja Jackson’s lighting design also helped signal when Pru was moving from real-time to memory to help evoke emotion during tougher scenes.

Amid Pru and Gus’ decline, their sons reconnect. Thomas and Gus’ son Art (a funny and loving Greg Maraio who starred in 2022’s “The Inheritance”) played on the same baseball team growing up and are now thrown together by their parents’ neurodegenerative disorders.

About one in nine people age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s dementia, according to 2024 data from the Alzheimer’s Association. For those whose lives have been impacted by it (and even for those with no experience), Drukman’s play strikes a heavy chord tempered by humor. Sure, the disease slowly steals memories, but also, the person suffering from the disease loses the ability to do simple functions like cooking a meal, remembering where they are or how to organize their day.

As someone who knows what it’s like to love and care for someone with Alzheimer’s, Drukman’s play pushed me to remember how critical it is to make new memories every single day.

SpeakEasy Stage Company’s “Pru Payne” runs through Nov. 16.