BERNIE (A Light in Dark Places)***

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwm4iDTCJvs

Available until: Unknown

A Light in Dark Places produces a festival each year to raise awareness of and reduce stigma around suicide. This year, it wasn’t possible to produce the festival as they normally would, so the plays are being presented online.

Bernie was written by Fred Perry and directed on Zoom by Meagan Harris. Stephen Tobolowsky and Bruce Katzman play the roles of two brothers, Bernie and Sid. Sid is a doctor. Bernie is an artist who isn’t having any success at the moment. Bernie calls Sid after breaking his ankles and his brother rushes round to help.

There were things I really liked about this play and things I wasn’t so sure about. It was a compelling piece of drama with two really strong acting performances. The characters were well-differentiated and there was a real sense of trust between the actors, even though the characters had a bit of a love-hate relationship. There was a lot of emotion in the play and some really moving moments.

However, I did feel that the play wasn’t really the right play to help raising awareness of suicidal feelings. Fighting suicide is for many people a daily battle and although things might not be as bad as the sufferer believes, it really does feel that bad and I found Sid quite insensitive at times. And although there are suggestions that this is an ongoing problem for Bernie, there are also things in the play that suggest the problem is actually much more recent and a response to a couple of very upsetting events which happened close together. Secondly, the way it all ended up… I don’t want to give anything away, but most people aren’t that lucky. This play doesn’t really give me hope because most people won’t be as lucky as Bernie. So I’m afraid I am really mixed on this one. I appreciate that it wasn’t intended to be an entirely happy ending, but it did still feel a bit like one. I’m also a bit confused about the whole medical side – while the broken ankles aren’t the most life-threatening medical issue and therefore aren’t the most urgent concern, I would expect them to be a bit more of a problem.

I think part of the problem for me is that my own particular understanding of mental health problems comes from the experiences I’ve had myself and the experiences of the people I love and when I watch something with a mental health theme, I do have a sort of expectation that I’ll completely relate to and agree with what I see. I think my concerns about this play are probably valid, but I think it’s important for me to take a bit of an emotional step back from this series of plays and not have these expectations and keep my mind open as I try to do with any other play.

After the play, there is a really interesting discussion between the actors and the creators of the festival. It’s really good to hear the history of the festival and their passion for the festival and what they hope to achieve by it. It’s really great to find people who really care and don’t just feel it’s the responsibility of the person suffering to ask for help (not that you always get help when you ask) – it’s the responsibility of other people to look out for signs too.