LAST RADIANCE

A playwright reflects on a life of art and activism and her loved ones’ struggles with cancer in this memoir.

Malpede’s mercurial father, Joseph, was prone to bouts of rage, and his “astonishingly scatological tongue,” which she credits with helping her learn to write, only grew sharper as he wasted away from terminal cancer. She cared for him during the end, and that experience prepared her to care for three other loved ones, all artist-activists like her, battling the same disease: Barbara Deming, Julian Beck, and George Bartenieff, the man who was her partner for 35 years. Malpede met George in 1987—she was 42 years old and he was 54—and fell deeply in love with his charming mix of “European gentleman” and “vagabond.” The author tenderly depicts their extraordinary life together, marked by love and artistic work—in 1995 they cofounded the Theater Three Collaborative. In 2019, George was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and in 2022, at the age of 89, he died in the author’s arms, a loss conveyed with searing emotion. This is an eclectic memoir; Malpede chronicles, sometimes in excessively granular detail, her life as an artist, activist, and lover. At the core of the remembrance is the deathly specter of cancer, and the heroic ways in which her loved ones managed to live joyfully despite its ravages. “The luminosity and courage of late-stage cancer patients, as the flesh pulls taut to the bone, the only word to describe this is awe—they exude awe for the tortured life they are still fiercely living, and we, awe for them.” This is a moving reflection on the power of both art and love in the face of death, both poignantly encapsulated by the indomitableness of George’s “boy-child-self” to the very end.

An affecting recollection that thoughtfully considers human mortality.