|
Gina
Wilkinson's first play took the audience by complete surprise
when it premiered at Canadian Stage in Toronto in 2005. My
Mother's Feet is the harrowing and beautiful story of
the double-edged blade of mother love.
Wilkinson's
play - clever, witty, sometimes quietly savage and upsetting
- is passionate about language and its use; lines keep echoing
in various reso-nant contexts. The playwright toys and puns
with her words, fashioning a series of tales-within-tales
that interlock to show the key figures in Dan's life: his
parents, his wife, Ursula, and his son, also named Dan. Never
melodra-matic nor cliché, My Mother's Feet brings
to the stage an accurate portrayal of a mother's all-encompassing
and suffocating love for her son.
Jumping
from one form of storytelling to another, the show uses humour
to beguile us before dark elements emerge. The character of
Dan switches be-tween boy and man, always affected by the
presence of his mother, even more so as he attempts to protect
his own son from her grasp. The sole ac-tress in the piece
plays two characters; the powerful, stalking mother with a
sneering disregard for peasants, and the more give-and-take,
sensual Ursula, both of them rich figures. The third actor
performs the roles of the all-too-unintrusive Dad, and the
police officer, who can no longer take Dan's para-noia, about
his mother stalking him, seriously.
My
Mother's Feet is about human feelings that get out of
control. Guilt and innocence, sympathy and antipathy are evenly
distributed in this play which runs on the power of words,
the hope of salvation and a pair of prosthetic feet. It's
funny. If you happen to think life is funny.
BeMe
Theatre is proud to have the playwright herself, an experienced
and highly-respected director and actress as well, come to
lend her talents not only as writer but as director of our
production. This production will also mark the European premiere
of My Mother's Feet.
|
Reviews
…the only label that fits this first play from actor/director
Gina Wilkinson is ”Must See”… Wilkinson deserves
full points for tackling a difficult subject in these times
of political correctness and for dealing with it in ways that
are ultimately entertaining, revealing and frankly compassionate.
- John Coulbourn, Toronto Sun
Ms Wilkinson deals with
the seldom touched topic of child abuse by a mother, something
of which one only gradually becomes aware as this at first
rather comic tale of a father’s obsessive love for his
son emerges. The writer’s skill is apparent in the way
the play gathers inexorable momentum, with every scene adding
new emotional layers until a grisly climax which is almost
too hard to believe, yet has been foreshadowed throughout...
- Ian Herbert, London
Theatre Record
|
