EXHIBITION REVIEW - Home Maker

Walk into the Djanogly Theatre and you find yourself looking at a large plywood box, like the back view of a film set. Enter the doorway on one side and it’s as though you’ve stepped into the flat of a grandparent.

A small armchair, made comfortable with cushions and antimacassars, invites you to take a seat. Pictures, doilies and knick-knacks are carefully positioned, and a computer mouse sits like a TV remote control next to the chair.

Once settled, the mouse allows you to navigate your own way through a set of panoramic photographs of elderly people in their flats, clicking on random objects to view films of each talking about the things that surround them.

Mementoes of the past loom large, and the recollections can be moving. But there’s also 92 year-old Betty Craxford and her irresistible demonstration of a ‘chuckling chimp’, or Roy Witham’s readings from the racier moments of his ongoing historical novel.

A few technical glitches aside, the experience is warmly intimate, engaging and wistful, just like those on screen. The variety of stories and characters is extended in a second room, where South Derbyshire gives way to Tokyo, and three more senior citizens offer us glimpses into their lives.

Much closer to the characters than a standard documentary would allow, the format makes the prospect of being offered a cup of tea and asked if we’re ‘courting’ yet seem only a moment away.

Wayne Burrows Metro Nottingham (three stars***)