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Holy Mothers
Photo by Tim Bowditch by Werner Schwab Translated by Meredith Oakes Directed by Vanda Butkovic Pleasance Theatre 5 – 10 May 2009
A review by Colette Gunn-Graffy for EXTRA! EXTRA! Holy Mothers is not a play for the faint of heart – nor, for that matter, for those who have only just finished eating. Filled with sexually explicit language, graphic descriptions of human excrement, and one spectacular act of macabre violence, this play, which catapulted playwright Werner Schwab to notoriety in his native Austria, is an acquired taste. Schwab claimed that he wrote Holy Mothers while drunk, and there may be some evidence for this. Although the action starts out mundanely enough – three Austrian women sitting in the kitchen, watching the Pope on TV – it is clear these characters are all a little ‘off’. The kitchen belongs to Erna, a pious woman who wears her stockings down around her ankles, dashes about in a fur hat she rescued from the trash, and sobs because her only son refuses ‘to have intercourse’ in case it provided her with a grandchild. Across from her is the lascivious Greta, a large woman who reminisces with hilarity about her own child eating glass and being abused; in heavy make-up and an awful blonde wig, she looks like a circus clown. Then there’s Mariedl, peering from beneath the table. This religious zealot may seem a bit awkward, but after all, she cleans toilets with her bare hands and the blessings of the Lord. Finally, in the second half, the Virgin Mary makes her entrance. (Incidentally, Schwab died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 35.) Whilst the first scene of this two-scene play has the women discussing the banal delights of their rather bleak lives – everything from liverwurst to toy dachshunds to (you guessed it) excrement – in the second, the women begin to fantasise. The result is a collective story-telling cum bacchanalian frenzy that ends in violence. In its explicit and gratuitous subject matter, Holy Mothers has much in common with the In-Yer-Face theatre movement of the 1990s, which sought to involve and affect audiences by confronting them with taboo subject matter. Looking back on the experience of watching Holy Mothers, many words come to mind – curiosity, disgust, shock, awe, amusement, disbelief; ‘enjoyment’, however, is not one of them. Yet despite the play’s obsession with sex and scatology – or more likely, because of it – all three characters on stage are oddly compelling. Director Vanda Butkovic brings out excellent performances from actors Hilary Burns (Erna), Carol Robb (Greta), and Sarah Calver (Mariedl). Unable to sit still, Burns’ Erna is the image of repression as she totters around with a feather duster and her ridiculous fur cap, lamenting the fact that God felt the need to give people bums. Her nervous energy is the perfect foil to Robb's nonchalant gluttony. It is Calver, however, who takes the cake, describing the climax of her fantasy as though it were the ecstasy of St Teresa, and leaving the audience torn between laughter and vomiting. Exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy inherent to modern society is at the heart of Schwab’s play. Although written several decades ago, it has a sharp resonance today, particularly in the wake of the Josef Fritzl scandal. The production opens with a cheerful domestic scene; wooden ceiling beams and a gorgeous alpine backdrop suggest the idyllic countryside from The Sound of Music. Then the women enter – on their bellies, creeping like worms across a carcass until they reach their places on stage – and the tone is set. Assuming one can stomach the excessive toilet talk, Holy Mothers is a startling and interesting work of theatre, if not exactly a delight.
Tues - Sun @ 7:45 pm Tickets £10 (£8 Concessions) Box Office: 020 7609 1800 Pleasance Theatre Carpenter Mews, North Road, London, N7 9JF
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y Couzen