Festival Review: “Mother to Mother”
[Bermuda Festival Review: Mother to Mother – written by Alan C. Smith]
Mother to Mother, a one woman play, performed masterfully on the City Hall Theatre stage by singer, playwright, actress Thembi Mtshali-Jones, was rewarded with a standing ovation on Tuesday, January 31st.
The play, based on a story by Sindiwe Magona and adapted for the stage by the writer along with director Janice Honeyman, is the devastating recounting of the murder of a white American scholar in Gugulethu (Cape Town) by the mother of one of the men involved in the slaying. Her testimony is addressed to the mother of the young woman.
Based on an actual tragic murder of a student who was beset by a crowd in 1993, the play explores the horror and harsh knowledge of being the mother of a child whose oppressed life has resulted in immersion in a culture of hatred and resentment.
The play was very well conceived. Using recordings of news reports and projections of moving and still images, it created a specific sense of place and involved and implicated the audience. The images ranged from gauzy pictures of the victim to everyday items like peanut butter, toothpaste and pots, clothes drying on a line.
During the performance the mother of the young man recalled, relived and recreated the events of the fateful day. Economic but effective movement across the stage transported the audience from her small home to the estate of the white woman she worked for. We relived her fraught bus ride home as fellow travellers discussed the day’s alarming events, her beating by the police looking for her son, and her agonizing confrontation with her son in the place where he fled to hide.
Song and passages of rich, poetically descriptive language were rendered expertly by Thembi to create a moving portrait of a mother who has done the best she can and even now must do the best she can to understand and accept what her son has done.
There were a few avoidable hiccups in the performance as the actress repeated words that perhaps had been pronounced incorrectly the first time. We would have been none the wiser.
Otherwise it was a tour de force of technique, inflection and tone as the sole performer recreated individuals and whole crowds with her voice and body; suggested changes of location and time with the deft movement of a chair or addition of another layer of clothing.
Compelling as the source material is, I feel that the director and tremendous actress elevated and amplified the writing considerably beyond what was explored on the page.
The standing ovation was much deserved.
- Alan C. Smith
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