Written by orange• March 18, 2025• 2:12 am• Anaheim, The Chance Theater, Theater, Uncategorized

World Premiere: Going Down Memory Lane: Such Small Hands @ Chance Theater – Review

Photos by Doug Catiller

Written by Patrick Chavis

Such Small Hands is now playing at the Chance Theater from February 28 – March 23, 2025.

This dramatic, two-person meditation on the difficulties of growing older with your partner plays out more like a satisfying theatrical exercise than a complete theatrical experience. As exercises go, you’re in good company with these two actors.

Story:

Set in a small house in New England, Such Small Hands follows a day in the life of Paul (Bruce Goodrich) and Marie (Juliet Fischer). Paul suffers from intense dementia, pain, and has trouble walking, and he fears becoming a burden for his wife, who is also older but still maintains much of her physical and mental facilities. Like a fly on the wall, over the 1 hour and 15 minute run time, we watch what an average day looks like for Paul and Marie, the tragic, comedic, everyday drama of those at the end of their lives.

Attempting to capture the struggles of life in old age is admirable. Content expressing our twilight years, the good, the bad, and the comical, can be a great place to find empathy and a deeper understanding. You can find much of this in Adam Szymkowicz’s work in Such Small Things. Through Matthew McCray’s deft direction of this piece, much of the gaps or backstory is communicated quite effectively. The interactions come off as realistic but also quite repetitive in nature.

Direction/Acting:

It was intriguing, for sure. However, by the end, it felt like I’d finished the first act of something. It’s a setup for a whole other part of the world they expose you to in this play, and you walk out, and you can only imagine it because the play is over. Under less skilled direction, this piece could have been boring, but the performances from Goodrich and Fischer make sure that’s not the case.

Paul and Marie’s adorable charm makes time fly by, only limited by the project’s scope. They can make a trip on the bus enjoyable.

Set Design:

In the smaller, more intimate Fyda-Mar Stage, Ganymede Projects designed a small house set with interesting flourishes. The design consists of a wooden platform set in the middle of the stage with two wooden benches that contain all the different compartments used throughout the show. Furniture and pictures are plastered all over the set. The background is a blurry but impressionistic painting. Matthew McCray utilizes creative projections. The set was beautiful aesthetically, but I found it too busy for such a slow and intimate piece.

For the patient viewer, there is a worthwhile story on the Fyda-Mar Stage this month.

I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. Source : “somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond” by EE Cummings (1931)