Theatre review - How to Survive Your Mother
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| Emma Davies in How to Survive Your Mother [Charles Flint Photography] |
JONATHAN Maitland has already mined the life of his mother in a memoir published in 2006. Using the same title, How to Survive Your Mother, Maitland brings her story to the stage and plays himself, the middle-aged playwright, looking back.
An eccentric figure, a liar and fraudster, Bru (Emma Davies) was Jewish but claimed to be half French and half Spanish. Swearing for Bru was “like punctuation”.
Her actions must have traumatised the son she sent to boarding school aged three. She often forgot to collect him for the holidays, and would repeatedly tell him she was dying of cancer. Maitland does not dwell on his pain, focusing instead on the story’s comic potential which is complemented by Oliver Dawe’s playful direction.
He recalls the old people’s home his parents ran in Cheam – to conceal the use of shared rooms they instructed certain residents to linger in the garden during a council visit.
Maitland also witnessed his mother demanding a divorce from his biological father, Ivor (John Wark), during a birthday treat at the Hilton. When Ivor refused, his mother threatened to kill herself and promptly crashed their car.
To ensnare her husband, Bru hired a private investigator (Peter Clements) and then married him. After that marriage failed, a string of unsuitable men followed. In the 1970s she opened Britain’s first gay hotel – Homolulu.
By that point, 20-something Maitland (Clements) was pursuing a career as a BBC reporter, of which his mother was clearly proud. His curiosity led him to uncover some disturbing truths about Bru and why the old people’s home had been shut down.
How to Survive Your Mother is entertaining enough but self-conscious acting and the anecdotal tone sap tension, while Maitland’s rather benign conclusion – that surviving his mother taught him to be a better father – weakens any emotional impact.
Until November 24