Melbourne Reviews

A little bit of research seems to place most of the blame with the writer but without a copy of the text, it's hard to know just how much. Projected and soundscaped cockroaches scuttling across the proscenium? Writers’ choice, or a bit of directorial nonsense to keep the light and sound departments busy? Either way, it's a laboured, distracting and detracting humour fail that doubles down with a Henson style stage traverse of an oversized bug in a box! Difficult subject matter needs light relief and this is a work that could certainly do with a few more sophisticated laughs, but not by risking your own creative achievement with a lame metaphor stage stunt needing a can of Mortein to kill it dead – just no!

But onto the positives and there are many despite the infestation.  

Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions opened on Broadway at the Hayes Theatre in early 2024 and went on to be nominated for four Tony awards. Family drama, memory play and a semi-autobiographical depiction of writer Paula Vogel’s own life, MTC have impressively nabbed the rights to the work in close proximity to the Broadway season and well before it’s West End transfer – pencilled for 2026 and once again, set to feature Jessica Lange in the title role of Phyllis.

For Melbourne, one of Australia’s most celebrated actors steps forth in an incredible performance that feels as if she’s drawing on everything she’s ever done to get here. Alongside Thornton is Yael Stone and Ash Flanders as her children Martha and Carl, and the worth of seeing this production is all in these three performances. 

Sigrid Thornton is a class act and powerfully delivers a mother straddling indifference, acceptability and reluctant responsibility. Her accession from abandonment to even keel independence followed by her decline is at times a painful watch but a riveting one in these hands. Designer Christina Smith enhances it all beautifully with intricate attention to wigs and wardrobe throughout and Thornton lives within every incarnation no matter how frightful she looks.

Yael Stone sets her standard high as Martha in the play’s first moments and succeeds incredibly in keeping us fixed on her journey. As narrator, the depth of this performance plays like a barometer in ensuring our wavering undulating sympathy for Phyllis is always in check.

While principally an examination of life with her mother, this work is equally a eulogy to the writer’s own brother and as such, she has written Carl with incredible fondness and compassion. Vogel’s loss is channelled and Ash Flanders has intuitively realised it. This is a strong detailed performance that makes the most of the texts humorous opportunities while also bringing an ethereal quality that perhaps comes from a character remembered with such love.

Production wise, the hallmarks of a decent budget are there and the challenges of multiple apartment sets across a series of time frames have, for the most part been well realised. There’s some very evocative underscoring from Sound designer and composer Kelly Ryall particularly in a lengthy but nonetheless powerful dialogue free scene that not only captures Phyllis’ somewhat autogenic solitude, but Sigrid Thornton’s astonishing capacity to captivate.

With its insightful lived observations and reflections, Mother Play is certainly a decent watch, but as for a story of kids raised in emotional poverty, there’s not a lot of new here. There are glimpses of Mary Tyrone’s substance induced confessions and Blanch DuBois’ struggle for respectability along with a more contemporary whiff of Alison Bechdel in Fun Home. Like Martha, Alison asks out loud for answers about a parent in the hope that if they come, they may well be kinder if the flashes of moments are better assembled. This work is worthy in that it speaks to hope while highlighting that our relationships are challenging and fraught and not always as we remember them to be. We are of course shaped not only by where we are dumped but more, what we do as we scrape ourselves off the bitumen at the fork in the road and gravitate toward the greatest promise. Mother Play is real life; hard life stuff and it will sting for some to see reflections of aged care, the loss of a sibling, coming out, isolation, rejection, alcoholism and loneliness.

Spanning five decades, this work is being clumsily pitched as a snapshot of American social commentary but that, most unappealing of concepts, feels far less a thrust of significance for the production than its more universal themes of family dynamic. Mother Play is a slow burn that substantially builds from some of its more pedestrian earlier scenes to a climax that is as painful as it uplifting as it is rewarding.

Every family is a story, but not all of them need to be told in public – that Paula Vogel has an articulate outlet for hers is fantastic but the real gold here is seeing three very fine Australian actors at work.