Sigrid Thornton strips away the glamour in sweeping tragicomic vision

THEATRE
Mother Play: a play in five evictions ★★★★
Southbank Theatre, until August 2

Fresh from a Broadway run featuring Jessica Lange, the Australian premiere of Paula Vogel’s three-hander Mother Play stars Sigrid Thornton as the latest mother with queer children to haunt the canon of American drama.

Yael Stone and Ash Flanders (rear) with Sigrid Thornton in Mother Play.Credit: Brett Boardman 

Phyllis Herman is a real piece of work. A chain-smoking, immaculately coiffed glamour-puss abandoned by her husband, she’s been left to raise two kids alone in Washington, DC, in the 1960s.

As young Carl (Ash Flanders) and Martha (Yael Stone) dutifully unpack boxes in their down-at-heel rental apartment, Phyllis reclines in fur coat and sunglasses, as if looking like a movie star can somehow magic away the bitterness of life below the poverty line.

Phyllis’s situation – and the aspect of her character that’s obsessively bound up in her physical attractiveness – might remind you of the smothering Amanda Wingfield from Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, though this work melds the claustrophobia and emotional brutality of domestic drama with a sweeping tragicomic vision that spans decades and delivers us swords drawn onto the social battlefield covered by Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

Thornton isn’t afraid to be unsympathetic. Phyllis is a victim, an unwilling mother who reluctantly chose giving birth over the risks of a backyard abortion, but Thornton doesn’t hold back on the cruelties inflicted on her children. Parentification (parent-child role reversal), binge-drinking, psychological and emotional abuse, and deeply ingrained bigotry will blight the childhoods of Carl and Martha, whose bond with each other deepens as they make their escape.

Sigrid Thornton and Yael Stone in Mother Play. Thornton’s character, Phyllis, may be cruel but she is also a victim.Credit: Brett Boardman

The foreshadowing of their queerness is about as subtle as a drag queen’s make-up, yet Flanders and Stone bring vitality and aching nuance to siblings compelled to discover what real love feels like in the absence of a healthy example of it. Flanders’ gift for camp comedy can make the audience cheer or howl with laughter. As the narrator figure in this memory play, Stone’s depth of feeling and implacable quest for emotional truth carve out a sharp elegiac frame.

Both actors sketch the maturation of their characters in the face of maternal betrayal with grace and nimble economy.

Phyllis, though, cannot or will not change, and the show’s starkest dramatic contrast lies between premature death faced with stoicism and style, and the living death of Phyllis’ loneliness. Perhaps Thornton’s finest moment comes when she strips the glamour away to deliver a wordless tragic vision of a woman growing older, estranged from her adult children, still performing even when she’s alone.

Director Lee Lewis draws out performances that complete each other, and the production design leavens and complicates the drama, time-travelling through decades from a ’70s gay disco to a hyper-real dementia ward. There’s even an over-the-top homage to cockroaches – a fun flourish in a play that dwells on the thanklessness of mothering, and ends with a quiet assertion of the value, independent of gratitude or reward – of caring for another human being.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
ZÖJ – Give Water to Birds ★★★★★
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, Friday July 4

For more than a decade, Gelareh Pour and Brian O’Dwyer have been immersed in an evolving musical conversation – one that reflects their shared passion for intercultural exchange and creative communion.

With ZÖJ, that conversation has become an intimate dialogue between the pair, who are partners in life as well as music. When they perform together, O’Dwyer’s drumming and Pour’s singing and playing on kamancheh and qeychak (traditional Iranian string instruments) construct a delicate sound world that relies on trust, intuition and a deep mutual understanding.

For their new album, Give Water to Birds, the Ballarat-based couple opened the dialogue to a third party: guitarist Brett Langsford, who is accompanying ZÖJ on tour to launch the album. At the Recital Centre Salon last Friday, Langsford became an integral part of the conversation without ever interrupting or disrupting its flow. Indeed, the guitar often set the scene for each piece – subtly and thoughtfully – with a drone-like hum, a shimmering looped motif or a slowly rolling sway.

 Guitarist Brett Langsford (at far left) with ZOJ – Gelareh Pour and Brian O’Dwyer.Credit: Chris Riordan

The album was entirely improvised, so this performance used the recording as a template, while allowing plenty of room for spontaneous interaction. Pour sat centre-stage, her eyes closed as she sang in Farsi, her voice soft as a whisper or swelling to become an impassioned invocation.

Her playing on kamancheh and qeychak emanated from the same space, deep within. The Iranian-born artist grew up steeped in classical Persian traditions, and her music taps into something that feels both ancient and universal. We may not understand the lyrics, but the emotions they convey are clear: yearning, tenderness, grief, hope, love.

O’Dwyer’s hypnotic drumming was mostly textural and colouristic rather than rhythmically focused. Sometimes his contributions were so subtle as to be almost subliminal: a faint padding of mallets; a rustle evoking a bird fossicking among leaves; small balls rolled around the top of the snare drum. Elsewhere, his sticks propelled a surge of momentum, with chiming guitar and swift bowing from Pour to create a rush of energy.

Time seemed to stand still, yet the hour flew by, and we emerged as if from a dream, having now become part of this continuing conversation.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

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