Mine

Published Friday 10 October 2008 at 11:05 by Jeremy Austin

Quite why the adoptive mother at the centre of Polly Teale’s play allows her middle class guilt to consume quite so completely is never fully explained.

Nevertheless, this once high-flying, pathologically successful woman is reduced to a rain-drenched, mentally unstable wreck by the end of an otherwise engrossing two hours and 15 minutes.

It is difficult to feel any sympathy for her as she finally wraps the baby she has adopted in her expensive leather jacket and rocks back and forth to blackout.

While the child’s mother, Rose, has been forced to give up her baby because of the alcoholism and drug dependency she developed as a way of blocking out her abusive past, this woman seems to be suffering from little more than middle class guilt - why am I so successful and beautiful when others are so poor and ugly and why did my parents demand my success for their love? Pull yourself together, for heaven’s sake. Mental illness is a great leveller.

Teale has written a slightly stylised piece that also combines movement and film. Katy Stephens, as Woman, brings credibility to the stylised dialogue that sets her apart from the rest of the more naturalistic cast. It’s a neat trick, that instantly puts her at odds with what’s going on.

As her husband, Alistair Petrie is commanding, withdrawing from his wife and yet still managing to be a bit part in her life. Clare Lawrence Moody provides light relief as the lazily written Eastern European cleaner, but allows her performance as Woman’s sister, Sister, to inform Woman’s character. She too is emotionally stunted and withdrawn - oppressed by their parent’s upwardly mobile desires.

Rather like the characters in Radio Golf at the nearby Tricycle Theatre, no-one in Teale’s study of how we each take responsibility for our lives and the lives of others emerges redeemed.