MATT OLIVER talks to actor Chris Larner about the difficulties and the rewards of putting on a play about his wife Allyson’s assisted suicide in a clinic in Switzerland

On November 6, 2010, Chris Larner accompanied his wife Allyson, who suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, and her sister to Switzerland. There they visited an assisted dying clinic in Pfänikon, where Allyson was administered a lethal overdose and lived the final hours of her life.

An Instinct for Kindness is the play that charts Allyson Larner’s last journey. It is also Chris’s way of telling his wife’s story. “She was an actress, I’m an actor – we met at an acting company,” he says. “It seemed that if I was going to tell the story, theatre was the natural form to do it in.”

So when did he first decide to write An Instinct for Kindness? “It first occurred to me on the morning Allyson died and I was immediately repulsed by my thoughts,” Chris tells me. “It seemed to me so mercenary, so inappropriate. “But then when I got back, friends and family kept asking me about the trip, you know, in this way that was curious but reverent – because people want to ask tough questions, and know what it was like, but they don’t want to be insensitive.” Chris started to see the play as a way to make sense of the events he’d lived through, but also as a way of explaining the experience to other people as well.

“I found myself recounting bits of the story, whilst I was still trying to make sense of it myself. There was the moral dilemma, but also saying goodbye to the woman I loved.

“At first I tried to put it out of my mind, but after about three months I decided that I wanted to tell Allyson’s story. “Even then I still wasn’t sure whether it was in good taste though,” he adds.

“That was why the first performances I did were very important to me. “I wasn’t sure how they would be received, but it went very well. “People who had known Allyson and who had been in the audience were coming up to me and saying ‘that’s exactly what she would have wanted you to do.’

"I think people were surprised, once they came to see it, at how watchable it was.”

Did he worry about the ethics of doing a play about assisted dying?

He pauses to think carefully. “When I was writing it and developing the direction, yes.

“The director and I kept stopping and thinking ‘God, is this right? Are we doing this? Is this tasteful?’ and that wasn’t something I was really sure of. “But I think that my nervousness about everything has meant that I wrote it with that in mind so I was careful to not make it too sentimental, or too hard-hitting.”

Chris tries to tackle the story frankly but says it avoids being tasteless by focusing on Allyson. “It is done in a way that is tasteful, because it is a simple dramatic format. “It is about how Alison and I met, how she got ill and how she eventually took the decision to go to Switzerland.

“I touch on the ethical questions lightly, really. It is Alison’s story – I focus on the human aspect.”

The play is a solo performance, delivered in a monologue style, with a single chair for a prop. “It’s me in a chair on stage and that’s it... there are no pyrotechnics or anything,” he says. “I just wanted to have the personal story of someone’s trip to Dignitas.”

Chris hopes the play will help create a more open discussion about the issue of assisted dying.

“One of the things I knew I wanted to cover was the indignity and difficulty in getting to Switzerland,” he says.

“I’m passionate about the issue and I feel it’s been mythologised and demonised.

“There’s a myth that it’s an easy thing to do – that you leap on the plane and there it is. But it isn’t.

“I thought just telling the story was the best way to dispel some of the assumptions.”

After rewrites of a play that was angrier in tone than the final product, Chris decided to go for a less direct approach. He hopes that after watching, audiences will have a better understanding of the issue. “The play carries a stronger political message by not being polemic – the act of simply telling the story is quite radical in some ways.

“Some people would say performing a play about this subject is quite an extraordinary thing to be doing and perhaps it is.

“But I think, after seeing my play, people feel as though they’ve met Alison and faced that dilemma themselves.”

An Instinct for Kindness returns to the Chipping Norton Theatre at 7.45pm on June 6. Tickets are £14, or £12 for concessions. To find out more or to make a booking, visit chippingnorton
theatre.o.uk