Disintegration riveting to watch
TO an even greater extent than its companion play, The Father, Florian Zeller’s The Mother evolves into a savage mind game with its spectators, redefining the term “audience involvement”. Thus we find ourselves caught up in the fractured reality of a mind that is in the process of disintegrating, the mind of a woman (Anne) whose identity has evaporated, along with her sense of purpose as she battles with the empty nest syndrome. Those breakfasts lovingly prepared before taking the children to school, the memories of their childish, trusting dependence, the joy of maternal duty, now belong to the past.
All that the present has to offer her is the dubious solace of pills and alcohol; her husband, immersed in his work and only vaguely aware of her distress, is largely absent from their home.
With little to occupy it, her mind focuses on small issues, such as the purchase of a red dress, or larger ones, like her beloved son’s temporary break-up with his girlfriend or her husband’s four-day seminar away from her – then her imagination works upon this limited material with feverish invention, shaping and reshaping, living, reliving and distorting every facet. Chronology and logic are shattered and relationships founder in the emotional maelstrom generated by her insecurities and ennui. A crisis is inevitable…
To this dark material, director Janice Honeyman brings insight and finesse, not minimising its horror but giving it an identifiable humanity with a cast who, without exception, deliver polished performances.
Although Van der Merwe as Anne is obviously the main protagonist, she is so integrated into the tight ensemble of her fellow actors that one is tempted to view The Mother as a collective rather than an individual tragedy; all suffer in different ways and to varying degrees from the situation created by her toxic mental state.
Newcomers Ruygrok and Wilson portray their 25-yearold personae with the confidence born of judicious casting and Hopkins’ characterisation of the pragmatic husband Pierre is impeccable. Van der Merwe rivets attention throughout.
Equally crucial to the success of this complex work is the staging, and here one has to acknowledge pure brilliance from the team of Rocco Pool for a clinically devised set, Mannie Manim for artful lighting and Daniel Rutland Manners for the oversized photographs projected onto the backdrop that give visual impact to the progressive unhinging of Anne’s mind.
As the drama plays out to its dénouement, the audience is as exhausted as the actors from an intense engagement with Anne’s evolving disintegration; eviscerated and confused, perhaps, but leaving with a sharp sense of having witnessed something remarkable. This is superlative theatre.