It is not just the upheaval of fitting the child into your life: the shift is also psychological. Parents become grandparents. Responsibility and accountability move down a generation.
That is why, in Jonny Donahoe’s knotty, bitter two-hander, a man known only as Son (Mark Barrett) has called on Mother (Blythe Duff) after an eight-month gap. She is spikily indifferent to his appearance, here in her back garden where she is burning family photographs on a bonfire. Despite the frosty reception, he must persist.
Son’s wife Alice (pronounced Malice, according to Mother) is expecting a Christmas baby. With that in mind, he is eager to end the resentment harboured by the older woman since he was six. He wants their relationship to be civil.
She is having none of it. The damage is not in their surface chitchat. If you did not know better you could miss it.
Duff captures the sparkle of Donahoe’s hard-bitten wit and can be waspishly funny. Barrett counters with low-status calm, avoiding confrontation. It could all be quite innocent.
But Mother’s lack of sentiment goes deep. Incapable of empathy, she has been brutalised by her past. The shadow of Son’s abusive father looms over them, but their own personalities also play a part in a trauma that has left them stressed, depressed and trapped in a destructive cycle.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
