Broadway actress Maryann Plunkett brings to life the sadness and joy of Alzheimer's

Backstage Conversation with The Notebook Star Maryann Plunkett

The black and white photo on the dressing room mirror is of a woman, shot from behind, looking out a window at a snow-covered yard, with the backs of two little stuffed animals on the windowsill beside her. It evokes a sense of tranquility and timelessness. For the owner of this photo, Tony Award-winning actress Maryann Plunkett, it represents the presence of her mother in a tiny nook in a large Broadway theatre. 

Plunkett’s mother is present to her as well in the much grander space of the stage at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre where the 72-year-old actress is starring as Older Allie in The Notebook, the musical based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks, which became a movie starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling.

“I try to enter the world she lived.” That world is dementia. Plunkett’s mother died at 91 after living with the condition for many years. Allie is played by three different actresses, representing youth, early adult life and elderly with Alzheimer’s. The story at all levels is about the love between Allie and Noah. It’s captured in a notebook Allie wrote in those earlier stages, and it’s what Noah reads to her after she no longer knows him, in the hopes that the times portrayed may break through to her.

For large parts of the show Allie and Older Noah, played by Dorian Harewood, sit to the side of the stage while the young and early adulthood couples play out the memories Noah is sharing. Plunkett is intensely in character the entire time as Allie tries to understand this story that is her life. 

Plunkett, who received a Tony nomination for her portrayal of Older Allie, was drawn to the show by Bekah Brunstetter’s book and Ingrid Michaelson’s music and lyrics, as well as the story, which she can relate to her mother’s experience.

“I was clearly drawn to that. Allie’s an artist and my mom was a musician and she liked to doodle,” she says, pretending to draw on a book on her vanity table. “It’s the creative force in a person. I think the script and music and lyrics are so spare and so deep. It makes me honest. I really feel it.”

While Harewood is only pretending to be speaking the notebook’s words, Plunkett stays in character by watching the younger actors. She imagines Allie’s reaction.

“I’m (Allie) hearing a story. What am I seeing? I’m seeing parts of me that I don’t know.”

She said her mother was often looking for something and was afraid she would run out of money so the family kept a wallet in a drawer in the buffet with 20 one dollar bills in it. The denomination didn’t matter. Her mother felt secure counting all those bills.

“I brought a couple of moments like that. I try to enter the world she lived.”

Plunkett’s father, who died three and a half years before her mother, is also present at the Schoenfeld. Beside the photo of her mother, Plunkett has written on a small piece of paper the Latin expression Ab initio, meaning in beginning or from the beginning. This is how he signed all his cards to her mother.

Plunkett shared caregiving with her father and four siblings, going to Massachusetts from New York once a month for a week or four days twice a month. In the final years caregivers and nurses assisted.

 “There was also joy in the years with my Mother.  She had a curiosity and a seeking.  As sung in The Notebook, ‘the sadness and the joy'.”

Besides this personal element of the show, Plunkett appreciates that the older couple, which is the one making audiences cry the most, is portrayed seriously and not for laughs or sentimentality as is so often the case with older characters. Both she and Harewood have had long marriages. She and her husband, actor Jay O. Sanders, celebrated their 33rd anniversary Oct. 1.

Plunkett says she is frequently met at the stage door by people sharing their stories of a spouse or parent who had Alzheimer's. Twice someone has told her they’ve just been diagnosed with the condition. One of them said the show had given him hope that he might have a spark of memory as Allie does at the show’s end.

The musical, which played Chicago before beginning performance in New York in February, is ending Dec.15. It will begin a national tour in Cleveland in September.

Asked what she would tell her mother now about her understanding of the experience of living with dementia, she pauses and her eyes fill with tears.

“I’m getting emotional. Simply, ‘thank you.’ It’s been a joy being with her again.”