✭✭✭✩✩

by Marsha Norman, directed by Alisa Palmer

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

May 20-June 21, 2008

Marsha Norman’s ‘night Mother may have received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1983, but it is fundamentally a highly artificial and manipulative play.  Any production requires white-hot performances from the two leads to carry us through on a wave of emotion since any let-up in tension makes the play’s contrivance apparent.  Sadly, Soulpepper’s current production exemplifies the latter situation.

Early on the the play’s 90 minutes Jesse (Megan Follows) announces to her mother Thelma (Dawn Greenhalgh) that she intends to kill herself in a couple hours.  Thelma initially thinks Jesse is joking, but when it becomes clear she is deadly serious Thelma deploys an arsenal of approaches from subtle pleading to guilt-laying to anger to hysteria to prevent Jesse from carrying out her goal.  “I'm just not having a very good time,” is Jesse’s reason, and it this production it is as paltry as it sounds.  Jesse has epilepsy, her marriage failed, her son is a criminal, her beloved father has died and she lives with her mother with no change in sight--these are the reasons she’s not having “a very good time.”  Besides, as in early Camus, suicide is her chance to say “No” to a life that no longer has meaning. 

The problem is that Norman has Jesse wait until she is feeling better than she ever has before to kill herself which contradicts the history of depression she is said to display.  The action consists of Jesse busily ticking off a list of things to be done before shooting herslef, like filling candy jars and cleaning out the fridge, that are signs of mania not depression.  When Jesse gets fed up with Thelma’s pathetic pleas she shouts, “I should have just left a note.”  We can only agree because it would have been more logical, but then Norman would not have a play.

Casting a real-life mother and daughter in the two roles may have seemed a good ploy, but it backfires.  The play works best when Thelma’s underlying resentment of Jesse comes to the fore.  Despite good work, the real bond of affection between Greenhalgh and Follows always shines through whether in smiles or caring looks so that Jesse’s unwavering course seems even less plausible.  Alisa Palmer’s direction oddly drains tension away from a play that needs it to survive so that between Jesse’s helpful reminders of where things are in the kitchen cabinets and Thelma’s cosy cocoa-making we nearly forget that this is supposed to be a live-and-death struggle.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-05-22.

Photo: Dawn Greenhalgh and Megan Follows. ©Sandy Nicolson.