We all have our memories. The events and experiences of our lives define us, make us what we are and it is our constant reference to our past that guides us forward.  In order to access the memories that have been filed away we have family snap-shot albums, a folder crammed with pictures on our phone and homes full of souvenirs (from the French se souvenir – to remember) of one sort or another. In fact, everything we do or own involves memory. So what happens when our memory fails, when our past ceases to exist, when we no longer know what we know?

There’s a lot of talk about dementia at the moment and this is, as it should be, reflected in drama. A couple of years ago we had the award-winning The Father; now, from Pipeline Theatre, we have Spillikin.

Sally is approaching old age and her memory is going. Her late husband, Raymond, was a bit of a geek and had the foresight to build his wife an all singing, all talking robot programmed with all their memories, lest she forget. Although she has a carer in the house it is to her new electronic friend that she turns.

Through a series of flash-backs involving the youthful Sally and Raymond we discover what her memories are made of. Young Sally is a bit flighty, a bit flirty. He’s a bit nerdy, a bit introvert, fiddling with wires, circuit boards and articulated pieces of metal. She brings him out of himself, he gives her a rock to cling to. She has ambitions to become an actress or a singer, anything to escape her boring home and parents. He has ambitions to fiddle with wires, circuit boards and articulated pieces of metal. They finally marry, holding their wedding reception in the Wimpy at Mill Hill Broadway, she leaving with a smear of ketchup on her lip.

It is as these memories slip away from Sally that the synthetic, robotic Raymond becomes her only link with her past, her life. But what good are our memories if we can’t remember them? Is there any point in being told what they were? Is there any consolation in not being able to remember that you forget things?

Judy Norman was excellent as Sally, desperately trying to retain her memories and still clinging to her youth. She wears tight leather trousers and has shelves full of books on The Ramones, other seventies bands and back numbers of the NME to a soundtrack of the epitome of 70s cool, Debbie Harry.

The disdainful young Sally is nicely played by Hannah Stephens and Mike Tonkin Jones is convincing as the youthful, nerdy Raymond. However, it was Will Jackson’s creation, Robothespian, who was the star of the show and rather upstaged everyone, especially early in the play when one couldn’t take one’s eyes off him. As the play went on he became, especially to Sally, more human and was taken a bit more for granted. But it (he?) really was a marvel to behold with his expressive face and soothing voice he certainly beats a laptop or mobile phone.

Although Spillikin raises and deals with serious issues it is, above all, like The Father, good, powerful drama and because of that it makes us empathise with the characters and goes some little way to make us understand their predicament more than, say, a TV documentary ever could.

I hesitate to use the words entertaining or enjoyable in the context of dementia but Spillikin was those things, but above all it was enlightening and very scary. It illustrates that all we hold dear can slowly disappear and that our memories are not writ in stone but on flimsy gossamer that can be blown away on the slightest breeze. Treasure them while you can, one day you might forget where you put them.   ★★★★☆    Michael Hasted  at the Everyman Studio, Cheltenham 10^th November 2016