In this one-per­son show, writer/​performer Ger­ald Williams is tak­ing care of his aging par­ents dur­ing their last five years. He com­pares his par­ents, and even though his mom is strug­gling with Alzheimer’s dis­ease, he real­izes, after her death, how inter­est­ing of a life she lived. Even though we tend to only remem­ber the last years, Williams prop­er­ly reminds us that we must remem­ber a per­son­’s entire life.

This show suc­ceeds as a very fun­ny com­e­dy, with some nice dark moments. I real­ly liked his expla­na­tion of the dif­fer­ences between sym­pa­thy, empa­thy and com­pas­sion. And his sto­ry about a high school class­mate was very fun­ny until its shock­ing con­clu­sion. This show man­ages to be both fun­ny and pro­found and serves as a love­ly trib­ute to his moth­er. It’s the best show I saw on Thurs­day night and one that I would high­ly recommend.

Venue 7 — The Cin­e­math­eque
Sto­ry­telling
60 Min­utes
Gen­er­al Audi­ence
Warn­ings: This per­for­mance dis­cuss­es the death of par­ents and a pass­ing ref­er­ence to suicide