Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, ‘Beyond the irony, lies the truth we’re avoiding.’

I get that.

I think.

A transgender woman, a parent, at home, alone, on Father’s Day, writing a review of a work called Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions.

Time for another coffee?

Irony?

This play is full of it.

Waiting for my ride at Q Theatre of Friday evening, my guest, deeply affected by Paula Vogel’s play, said, ‘it’s as though Phyllis (the mother in the title) had a list of ten ways she could screw up her kids lives, tried them all, and then found ten more’.

I think he used a different word for ‘screw’.

He’s right, of course.

He also said he loved the production, thought the performances were outstanding, the script excellent, but that he wasn’t at all sure, if he’d continuously been treated by a parent in the way Phyllis treated her kids, that he’d have still been around for the dementia phase.

Fair comment.

I took it as a warning.

Some context: Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions is the latest semi-autobiographical work by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Washington, D.C. native Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive, Indecent) offers a compelling examination of four decades, and five evictions, within a complex family dynamic. The narrative follows siblings Martha and Carl who experience their first eviction as twelve- and fourteen-year-old adolescents in 1962 while navigating their identities under the influence of their charismatic, demanding, and alcoholic mother. Charting the family’s progression across various neighbourhoods in the D.C. suburbs and ending up in a much revered gated community, the play spans cultural milestones from the Sexual Revolution through the Disco Era to the New Age movement of the 1990s. Premiered to critical acclaim on Broadway as recently as the 2024 season, Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions is already recognized for its wry wit, incisiveness, brutality, and moments of unexpected tenderness, serving both as an act of catharsis and one of reconciliation.  

No surprise, Paula Vogel is well known and respected as a writer of scripts like this.

There are three characters – solo mother, a daughter, and a son – each of whom Vogel has given a central function. Daughter Martha acts as narrator, the story is son Carl’s, and mother Phyllis is the focus of much of the forward movement of the play.

Martha (Amanda Tito) leads us through the ‘evictions’, keeps us in tune with what year it is, connects us with the nature of each new abode, and ages gracefully in a delicately nuanced, pastel painted performance. We get to know Carl (Tim Earl) before ‘lights up’ because, in the programme (spoiler on the way), there’s a copy of a letter that he wrote to Martha before he passed away. Earl exemplifies the energy of youth, a joy in life, and embodies a kindness that is both infectious and tragic. We like both of these young people very much, they’re courageous, patient, and generous.

Phyllis (Jennifer Ludlam) is a very different cup of char. She’s bitter, manipulative, angry, funny, irritating, a private drunk, most of all though, she’s a mum.

She treats her kids appallingly, but they love (and care for her) anyway.

So many families are exactly like that.

It’s been a week of excellent scripts and, in this case, the text is massaged into that most satisfying of experiences, an outstanding production, a work of art: performances without ego that sing, words that intersect with the design concept to create a product that is so much greater than the sum of its already excellent parts, spaces that are filled with nuance and shade that, while molded to fit the work, leave plenty of space for an audience to tint with their own cultural familiarities and to apply their own patina of the passing of years. It’s an ‘everyman’ of a play, speaking to me as an eighty year old queer woman who loved during the 60’s and 70’s and held the hands of far too many dying friends during the ‘80’s, ‘90’s (and beyond) as they succumbed to the horrors of HIV/AIDS and wondering ‘why not me’ – survivor guilt isn’t fun – while speaking just as effectively to my twenty-three year old straight male guest who delved deep into the family dynamics and, in particular, the child parent relationship challenges as they impact Martha as she enters her 50’s. I can only assume how the narrative affected my other guest – a fifty-year-old gay woman with elderly parents – who gave me a ‘shut up, I’m driving’ look when I, with my usual sensitivity, asked her what she thought. Vogel is the ultimate crafter of scripts and, when there’s an autobiographical overlay, the result is bound to be impressive.

And it is.

Vogel’s script in brought to life on a pink-toned triangle of a set (Daniel Williams/Talia Pua) with cleverly placed (and used) curtains, a couple of standard lamps, and comfortable lounge chairs, all covered with cheap, crinkly plastic wrap which adds to the all-abiding sense of impermanence offered by the text. There’s also the impression that Martha lives her entire life out of a largish cardboard packing box.

Subtle visual cues abound.

Integrated lighting and sound (Sean Lynch) are evocative – soft tones and 60’s free jazz (think John Coltrane and Miles Davis) – immediately place us in time and space and integrate with the set and props so very well. The visuals and aurals are unobtrusive once the action kicks in, but their impact is undoubted.

Cue: direction.

Sophie Roberts is a genius. She understands how to create a theatre experience like no-one else, she has an intuitive understanding of the interface between page, stage, and audience, and the skill set to make it happen in the most satisfying manner for everyone. She moves actors in ways that subtly expose both the play and the characters, shapes the text so we all receive the entire narrative, and always leaves space for us. One word that sums up Roberts’ production of Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions?

‘Satisfying’.

If there’s one single component of this production that impresses above all others it’s the scene changes. Sound silly? Sure does, it’s just a function, after all. Yes, it is, but I’m sure you’ve seen shows where the scene changes have gone on forever, bodies stumbling around in the semi-darkness, falling over, bumping into each other, dropping things, the odd expletive, and when the lights come up, you’ve forgotten where the play was up to, and the dead body – the reason for the set change in the first place – is still where it had been ten minutes earlier.

Sound familiar?

In Roberts’ Mother Play there are quite a number of essential scene changes that drive the action, and they are woven into the text in ways that fascinate rather than irritate, add detail to both character and narrative, and beautifully enable the passing of time. Director and cast have taken the trouble to really make them work.

Roberts’ delivers a directing masterclass creating a work that is fulfilling in its unity, that places Vogel’s storytelling front and centre, and allows the actors to do their work. There’s a clear love of the art form – and for the work itself – and this alone is worthy of the standing ovation at the conclusion of the evening.

Tito and Earl are wonderful, immediate, accurate, and at their best when acting in the spaces between them to expose the full array of information we need about their mother but also about each other. Nothing cheesy, just honest, straight up, reality. It’s impressive and really moving.

The evening plays out, of course, in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and it’s not a long straw to draw to believe that many attendees on opening night will have been personally touched by it. While the horror of the virus didn’t make itself known until the 80‘s, many victims were unwittingly infected during the sexually permissive ‘60’s when our play begins – a clever use of historical accuracy.

The closet is also powerfully present throughout to the extent that friends who should know about these things make a strong case for Phyllis herself having been safely in the closet as many lesbians were at that time.

It certainly makes sense to me.

Even though it’s essentially Carl’s story, and it’s narrated by Martha, Phyllis (Jennifer Ludlam) is at the centre of every aspect of the narrative. She’s a refugee from every afternoon soap from the three decades covered by the play, a Mamie van Doren or a Diana Dors who never quite made it, an acrimonious, cocktail-swilling, cigarette-smoking, barrel of bitchiness, a parent to be tip-toed around but cared for until the very, very end. Phillis is there, controlling the field of play, even from the depths of her dementia.

Ludlam is astonishing.

She always is but this, in my opinion, is her very best theatre work. She’s ingratiating, annoying, manipulative, funny, cryptic, nasty, even occasionally motherly, but she is always the servant of Vogel’s text and Roberts’ production. There’s a simple personal joy in that what she has created has stayed with me, resonating still, as I write this.

Phyllis with dementia is magnificent, fragile, impotent in her anger, vulnerable, confident in her confusion, a lost bookend of a life. Like a classical quartet, Tito, Earl, Ludlam, and Roberts, play Vogel’s score as though it’s a Vivaldi concerto, delicate, flirtatious, comical, pale, yet full of storm. This is live performance at its very best.

Silo Theatre is a great production house, one you can really trust, and, if you love great theatre as I know you do, you will most certainly see Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions.

It’s on at Q Theatre Rangatira in Queen Street until September 20^th.

Book now.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

What’s your relationship with your parent like? And how much has it shaped the framing of your world as an adult? This was a question that ran repeatedly through my mind as I watched the events in Mother Play: a play in five evictions, well, play out.

At first scan, there is nothing about my parents that maps to the world depicted in the play. Playwright Paula Vogel, a lesbian Jewish American who grew up in Washington DC, has stated that this work is partly autobiographical; while the daughter character Martha is ‘a conglomeration’ of various people in her life, Vogel says that Martha does represent her experience. The two other characters are named Carl after her brother Carl and Phyllis after her mother Phyllis. Of course all playwrights mining their life experiences (guilty here) play fast and loose with fact (also guilty) so of course Mother Play should be taken as intended, as a fiction.

Vogel has also said that every version of Martha, Carl and Phyllis should be different, as it is brought to life by different actors and creative teams. I can think of no better actors in Aotearoa to take on this play than Jennifer Ludlam, Amanda Tito and Tim Earl, who together with director Sophie Roberts have invested their own lived experiences into their characters, to thought provoking effect.

The events in Mother Play span over 60 years from the early 1960s to present, with Martha acting as both narrator and memoirist. The social norms of that time, especially the class snobbery, homophobia and fear of contagion during the AIDS epidemic, underscore much of the events affecting the family. Moving from apartment to apartment, the trio – mother Phyllis, son Carl and daughter Martha – clutch at tethers of belonging, but every place they move to is unwelcoming. Giant cockroaches, mounds of trash and the unseen but ever-present alienation from their neighbours indicate a family that is on the edges of society.

Early on, a teenage Martha describes a sexual assault on a bus where no one, not even the driver, intervened – there’s a hint that sexual violence has affected more than one member of the family and they do not expect anyone to help. As a solo, uneducated mother, Phyllis holds in her desperation to survive with a veneer of trashy glamour, but it breaks out in the form of smoking and martini binges. Ultimately, all the trio have to hold to is each other – but those tethers fray often, and Phyllis’ abrupt rejections are the basis for the ‘five evictions’ of the title.

Sometimes called a memory play, Mother Play is told from Martha’s point of view, as she tries to explain to us (herself?) what her relationship with her deceased brother Carl meant, but Phyllis – wounded, dependent, contradictory yet somehow still loveable – is a force that intrudes on every scene.

Carl and Martha, 14 and 12 when we first meet them, are less children than their mother’s keeper: they exude a puppy-like devotion, rushing to get her drinks and smokes. Tito is especially convincing as a gangly preteen, scoffing chips while hiding their pain at their mother’s frequent put-downs.

Ludlam is, of course, utterly disarming, comedic and revolting simultaneously as the emotionally wounded, immature matriarch.  The opening night audience – mostly theatre people and patrons who were clearly already fans of Ludlam’s chameleon-like acting ability – responded rapturously to her every gesture. Yet Ludlam never overplays it, and in Tito she finds an apt partner for the physical comedy required.

Where Martha moves from innocent child to cynical young adult, burying her need for parental approval under a growing confidence, Carl stays constant, an optimistic and loving son and brother.  Earl does a fantastic job of showing Carl’s fragility, quiet strength and faithfulness, and their partnership with Tito as mutually supportive siblings injects joy into this otherwise bleak story.

Director Sophie Roberts has made a good call in resisting the temptation to tip into grotesque comedy. She never allows us to laugh at the characters. There is much in the script that could be played for shocked laughter – especially Phyllis’ dramatic, awful pronouncements – yet this creative team leave it to the audience to respond on their own terms. Despite what I said in the previous sentence, I get the sense that Vogel does not set out to shock. At its most basic, this is a story about an ordinary family – and who among us doesn’t have misunderstandings with our parents?

It falls to the design team to frame the metaphors abundant in the text. Set designers Talia Pua and Daniel Williams have made bold choices with hot pink curtains which are pulled open or closed to reveal different parts of the set as the family move from place to place. There are objects displayed on pedestals as if they’re some kind of installation: a ludicrously small mirror ball, a TV that plays vacuous 1960’s dance numbers, a microwave, a crystal ball – each embodying something about the era in which the scene takes place. Used to versatile effect is a pink door/ portal over which giant cockroaches scurry. I particularly loved the box – ‘a U-Haul box, medium size’ which contains the sparse ephemera of Carl’s life, small objects which Martha takes out and which provide the emotional punctuation of the play.

The set also provides subtle magic – a mountain of rubbish appears when the door is opened, seconds later it’s just an empty room; there’s a recurring gag with a bottomless handbag. Don’t all of us experience magic in our home lives, magic which is so normal to us that we take it for granted?  Each piece of set furniture is wrapped in white cloth and clear plastic, suggesting the intransigence of this family; they never have time to unpack, and maybe by the end, they’ve given up on finding a home. But perhaps they have also realised that imperfect as it is, their home is each other.  And the pink? Perhaps it’s recognition that despite Phyllis’ fearful, socially-fuelled rejection of the sexual identities of her children, it’s her that should look around and see the world as it always has been.

Sean Lynch’s lighting design is unusual and striking, featuring a bank of large rectangular LEDs mounted along  the top of the curtain rails, turning into apartment skylights in one scene, nightclub neons in another.  Costumes by Tautahi Subritzky are understated for the characters of Carl and Martha – after all, they are only the sidekicks to the larger-than-life figure of Phyllis, with her bouncy blonde curls and over compensatory statement fashion pieces. Ludlam flaunts these most deliciously.

You could say that Phyllis is a character study of an abusive mother, but Vogel’s writing highlights how simplistic that term is. Most of us love our parents in spite of – because of – their failings. As we grow older and the power balance starts to shift, our perceptions change too. In Mother Play the payoff comes in the final minutes, an almost wordless scene that moved many in the audience to tears. It certainly made me respond, as someone who is currently watching a parent slowly fade to dementia, observing their power being stripped to reveal their true humanity.

Director Sophie Roberts says that Vogel’s description of Mother Play as a ritual of forgiveness guided this production, and it is this softness that I walked out with at the end.  In a world where people seem to hurt each other, where governments act callously and where many of us worry how inured we are now to witnessing violence, this play tells us: we can still feel, we can still find empathy, we can hope, we are still human in the small acts that matter.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer