Spoilers
CONTENT ADVISORY
This play explores sensitive and potentially triggering themes. It centers on an elderly couple, Marie and Paul, navigating the late stages of Paul’s terminal illness and dementia. The story unfolds in their home and deals deeply with themes of aging, memory loss, and mortality.
The production includes the following triggering content:
Suicide & Assisted Death: Paul frequently talks about wanting to end his life to escape the pain caused by cancer and the loss of his faculties due to dementia. Marie struggles with honoring his wishes while trying to hold on. Ultimately, Paul takes a handful of sleeping pills (with Marie’s reluctant help), believing it will end his life. However, Marie secretly swaps most of them with placebo pills, leaving him to sleep but survive.
Chronic Illness and Dementia: Paul’s battle with advanced cancer and dementia is a primary focus. His confusion, forgetfulness, and disorientation are consistent throughout the play, contributing to the emotional and psychological weight of the story.
Themes of Hopelessness and Not Wanting to Go On: Paul repeatedly expresses feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and the desire to stop being a burden. He discusses dying as a release from suffering, and there is a persistent undercurrent of existential despair.
Adultery/Mention of Past Infidelity: Late in the play, Paul apologizes for having cheated on Marie years ago, which is revealed as one of his life’s regrets. Marie acknowledges and forgives him.
Verbal Aggression/Emotional Strain: There are moments of frustration and short bursts of anger, especially from Paul as he battles with his failing memory and physical decline.
Substance Use: There are references to taking sleeping pills, discussions about pain medications, and refusal of palliative drugs due to fears of being “behind a wall” of medication. There is also a discussion about Paul’s desire to smoke his old pipe, though it is never actually done onstage.
Depictions of Caregiver Strain: Marie’s internal monologues and direct addresses to the audience reveal her emotional exhaustion, internal conflict, and grief as she cares for Paul.
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Executive Producer
David & Judy Joss
Associate Producer
David & Danice Limberg
Executive Season Producer
Bette & Wylie Aitken
Corporate Sponsor
Associate Season Producer
The Family of Mary Kay Fyda-Mar
EXTENDED BY POPULAR DEMAND THRU APRIL 6th!
On the Fyda-Mar Stage…
Morning light filters through the kitchen window.
Marie brews the coffee—black. Paul asks for sugar. Marie says the sugar is out of reach. So they drink it black.
Paul wonders, “Do we drink it black because the sugar is out of reach or because we like it that way?”
For Paul and Marie, a lifetime of love is woven into these small rituals, their days filled with playful quibbles, knowing glances, and the gentle rhythm of routine. But lately, those routines are shifting. Paul is forgetting things—small things, at first. A name, a place, the way home.
And yet, through the confusion and the loss, there is still love. There is still laughter. There is still Marie, holding Paul’s hands in hers, reminding him of the life they built together.
From Chance Theater’s 2011 Resident Playwright Adam Szymkowicz, this world premiere is a heart-wrenching and unexpectedly humorous meditation on memory, devotion, and what it truly means to hold on – to the past, to each other, and to the fleeting beauty of now.
Such Small Hands celebrates love, sacrifice, and the beauty of a long marriage while also exploring the complexities of dementia and aging. For more info, visit this page.
“There are plays that knock you over with intensity. And there are those that seep in, settle under your skin, and stay there long after the lights come up. Adam Szymkowicz’s Such Small Hands falls firmly in the latter category….There was a moment toward the end of the play when I began to cry. Not the showy sobs that occasionally interrupt more manipulative dramas, but the soft, involuntary tears of recognition.”Stage and Cinema
“Certain to resonate with anyone who has known, dealt with, or loved someone in the process of losing their very self, Such Small Hands is a play (and its Chance Theater World Premiere production) you won’t soon forget.”StageSceneLA
“Here, we are gifted with a veteran playwright’s talent for weaving together his characters’ naturalistic conversations with seemingly invisible plotting.”Orange County Register
“Matthew McCray directs with sensitivity, imbuing the play with a poetic quality often attempted but rarely achieved. The actors’ fine performances are further enhanced by inventive scenic design.”Jordan R. Young
“because the story was told with such emotional truth, each audience member was able to connect in their own personal way, from laughter to tears to the understanding nods that silently said, ‘Yeah, that’s… me, too.’”The Show Report
Community Partner
Show artwork designed by KC Wilkerson, kcwdigital.com.
