I know it's been a loooong time... and most of what we discussed last year has been buried deep, deep in the recesses of your memory. So I've pasted a review of a performance of the play below - it should bring back the plot at least and remind you of the characters... which, if you want a head count, totals to four.
My Mother Said I Never Should
People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, through Nov. 12, (610) 644-3500.
Granddaughter: "It's all old here."
Grandmother: "It wasn't always."
Just as the piano, so carefully polished for 60 years, was new once, so was Gran once a child in a pinafore; and so, too, will the granddaughter grow up to be a woman who will have a child of her own. Charlotte Keatley's poignant and engrossing play, My Mother Said I Never Should, traces four generations of women through the changing times of our century and the carefully guarded secrets of an English family. A brilliant ensemble of four actors, under Abigail Adams' intense and meticulous direction, brings Keatley's fine and wise play vividly to life.
This is not one of those trash-the-past Feminism Triumphant plays, nor is it one of those sit-com-cutie Nothing Ever Changes plays. My Mother Said I Never Should manages to say something about both how things change and how they stay the same — that the changing role of women has deeply altered the way women view themselves and their lives, as well as showing us that mothering a daughter is the tie that binds.
The play is presented as short scenes, developing the chronology of the family. It begins when Doris Partington (Ceal Phelan), born in 1900, becomes a mother in Manchester during WWII. Her daughter Margaret (Marcia Saunders) will grow up and marry in the 1950s, having a daughter of her own, Jackie (Kathryn Petersen), who will grow up to be first a hippie art student and then a sleek art dealer, with a daughter of her own, Rosie (Susan McKey), born in 1971. Rosie will be raised by Margaret, whom she believes is her mother, but the secret of Rosie's birth is not a dark and haunting pivot in the plot — it is simply a difficult fact of these women's lives, like husbands, like cancer.
The plot scenes are occasionally interrupted by playground scenes — glimpses of the girls, each inhabiting their own time in the century, each inhabiting their own personality, playing together. We see that Doris was always cowed, that Margaret was always unsure, that Jackie was always wild, that Rosie was always complicit. These glimpses are deeply disturbing, filled with violence and sexuality and mantras of misinformation.
The acting is wonderful — every gesture, every walk, every variation on the Manchester accent seems perfect. Most wonderful is Ceal Phelan whose progress from young matron to old great-grandmother happens in exquisitely subtle increments, as does her character's self-knowledge and tolerance. Marcia Saunders is heartbreaking as Margaret, creating the long-suffering, self-effacing humility of a woman caught in the middle — by her time, and by her mother, her daughter, her love that has too little self-love. Kathryn Petersen makes the play's least likeable character irresistible and shows us the high cost of independence, and Susan McKey (who may be getting a bit too old for all these girlish roles) conveys the ungovernable energy and startling insight of a contemporary teenager.
My Mother Said I Never Should is about women and womanly relationships, and it is also about particular people who each have their own personalities and pleasures and limitations, each distinct, yet each connected by family resemblances. And it is a play about the way women relate to men and what it was, at different times, to be a wife and mother. And it is a play about possessions — the value things gain — and lose — through time.
The goods of these lifetimes are contained in the clever set that is the small stage's back wall — a huge open cupboard, sort of a vertical attic, filled with teddy bears and willowware plates and wicker hampers and tennis racquets and hatboxes. (Hats off to William McNeil Marshall, David Monnin, Kristin Steva and Roseanne Haines, who created the set and the props.)
Perhaps most symbolic of the possessions is a 19th century solitaire set (marbles on a board, not unlike the peg-game called "Hi-Q") Gran's mother had given her a century ago. Gran gives it to young Rosie who, at the end of the play, finally figures out how to "win" — leaving only one marble in the middle. This may be the secret that has to be learned: the trick of being solitaire, of being on your own, independent, squarely in the middle of your own life, surrounded by the women of the past who got you there.
— Toby Zinman
http://citypaper.net/articles/110295/article014.shtml
My Mother Said I Never Should
People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Rd., Malvern, through Nov. 12, (610) 644-3500.
Granddaughter: "It's all old here."
Grandmother: "It wasn't always."
Just as the piano, so carefully polished for 60 years, was new once, so was Gran once a child in a pinafore; and so, too, will the granddaughter grow up to be a woman who will have a child of her own. Charlotte Keatley's poignant and engrossing play, My Mother Said I Never Should, traces four generations of women through the changing times of our century and the carefully guarded secrets of an English family. A brilliant ensemble of four actors, under Abigail Adams' intense and meticulous direction, brings Keatley's fine and wise play vividly to life.
This is not one of those trash-the-past Feminism Triumphant plays, nor is it one of those sit-com-cutie Nothing Ever Changes plays. My Mother Said I Never Should manages to say something about both how things change and how they stay the same — that the changing role of women has deeply altered the way women view themselves and their lives, as well as showing us that mothering a daughter is the tie that binds.
The play is presented as short scenes, developing the chronology of the family. It begins when Doris Partington (Ceal Phelan), born in 1900, becomes a mother in Manchester during WWII. Her daughter Margaret (Marcia Saunders) will grow up and marry in the 1950s, having a daughter of her own, Jackie (Kathryn Petersen), who will grow up to be first a hippie art student and then a sleek art dealer, with a daughter of her own, Rosie (Susan McKey), born in 1971. Rosie will be raised by Margaret, whom she believes is her mother, but the secret of Rosie's birth is not a dark and haunting pivot in the plot — it is simply a difficult fact of these women's lives, like husbands, like cancer.
The plot scenes are occasionally interrupted by playground scenes — glimpses of the girls, each inhabiting their own time in the century, each inhabiting their own personality, playing together. We see that Doris was always cowed, that Margaret was always unsure, that Jackie was always wild, that Rosie was always complicit. These glimpses are deeply disturbing, filled with violence and sexuality and mantras of misinformation.
The acting is wonderful — every gesture, every walk, every variation on the Manchester accent seems perfect. Most wonderful is Ceal Phelan whose progress from young matron to old great-grandmother happens in exquisitely subtle increments, as does her character's self-knowledge and tolerance. Marcia Saunders is heartbreaking as Margaret, creating the long-suffering, self-effacing humility of a woman caught in the middle — by her time, and by her mother, her daughter, her love that has too little self-love. Kathryn Petersen makes the play's least likeable character irresistible and shows us the high cost of independence, and Susan McKey (who may be getting a bit too old for all these girlish roles) conveys the ungovernable energy and startling insight of a contemporary teenager.
My Mother Said I Never Should is about women and womanly relationships, and it is also about particular people who each have their own personalities and pleasures and limitations, each distinct, yet each connected by family resemblances. And it is a play about the way women relate to men and what it was, at different times, to be a wife and mother. And it is a play about possessions — the value things gain — and lose — through time.
The goods of these lifetimes are contained in the clever set that is the small stage's back wall — a huge open cupboard, sort of a vertical attic, filled with teddy bears and willowware plates and wicker hampers and tennis racquets and hatboxes. (Hats off to William McNeil Marshall, David Monnin, Kristin Steva and Roseanne Haines, who created the set and the props.)
Perhaps most symbolic of the possessions is a 19th century solitaire set (marbles on a board, not unlike the peg-game called "Hi-Q") Gran's mother had given her a century ago. Gran gives it to young Rosie who, at the end of the play, finally figures out how to "win" — leaving only one marble in the middle. This may be the secret that has to be learned: the trick of being solitaire, of being on your own, independent, squarely in the middle of your own life, surrounded by the women of the past who got you there.
— Toby Zinman
http://citypaper.net/articles/110295/article014.shtml
Task for Monday:
ReplyDeletePick out any two symbols in Act I and comment on them.
suky it shows the life of margaret, jackie and especially of rosie.
ReplyDeletethe different ways of saying mother shows how generation changes over time
The doll suky shows how each person handles it and uses their own lives to show how they feel. they put all their feelings and thoughts out onto the doll.
ReplyDeletethe doll suky which is passed down through three of four generations and how she is different with each of them
ReplyDelete