Ramesh Meyyappan is a versatile and restless performer who ranges across multiple styles and genres. For Love Beyond, he has engaged with a mixture of scripted and visual theatre to articulate the anguish of a deaf man approaching death. His memories and abilities evaporate, as he recalls a loving relationship with his wife while a care-worker struggles to communicate against his frustration and pain. At times moving and intense, his recollections trace the past and, like the mirrors which dominate Becky Minto’s set, are distorted and imposing, gradually allowing the protagonist to understand and find some peace.

^{Ramesh Meyyappan as Harry in Love Beyond / Pictures: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan}

By turns emotive and hallucinatory, the production (directed by Matthew Lenton) is at its most striking when the words disappear. A moment of violence suddenly provokes noise and disorientation, plunging the audience into the experience of a deaf man, as language is overwhelmed and eroded. Meyyappan’s charisma and physicality lead the narrative, and the slow reveal of his past collates fragments of happiness and pain into a moving reconstruction of powerful love.

The dialogue is largely functional, telling its story and providing context for a series of mime episodes. These are the most immediate sequences, and hold the energy of Love Beyond; leaning into the human tragedy, the snatches of movement open up a character’s journey towards death. Perhaps relying on the innate pathos of the situation rather than finding a complete dramatic form to express tragedy, Love Beyond is rarely bleak and offers a sentimental optimism in its final moments. Capturing one man’s final days, it is taut in structure, reminds us of Ramesh Meyyappan’s charisma, and is more restrained than challenging.

Love Beyond (Act Of Remembrance), Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Friday 17 & Saturday 18 February; reviewed at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of Manipulate.