The Mystery of Things – Mother Lear at the Cal Shakes Upper Grove
By Resident Dramaturg Philippa Kelly
Shakespeare’s King Lear speaks profoundly to the mysteries of age, pride, loss, abandonment and love; and it has a mighty counterpart in Mother Lear, a brilliant two-person, 50-minute piece made and performed by Ava Roy and Courtney Walsh.
Mother Lear’s premise is chillingly plausible in these days of increasing great age and dementia: a mother and daughter are caught in the snarl of mental deterioration and family obligation. The lines of Shakespeare’s great play provide the only verbal language that the two women share, and these lines come out in fragmented, fractured, funny, and heartbreaking new combinations in a setting that makes the audience laugh and cringe and listen to Shakespeare’s words afresh.
In Mother Lear we learn that the mother, played by Courtney Walsh, is a professor, publisher of several books, now in cognitive decline, her familiarity with King Lear the only toolbox by which she can navigate the world. All other connections to life as she knew it have disintegrated. Her daughter Cordelia (played by Ava Roy), displays great patience in understanding the her mother’s new limitations. But Cordelia has also come to acknowledge her own limits – her mother is now too difficult for any one person to handle, and you’ll see as you watch Mother Lear why today is an auspicious day.
Babies are helpless, smooth-skinned and vulnerable. You want to nurture them. But when our elders become babies, they are wrinkled, decayed, hard to lift, dress, bathe – not so winsome anymore. Mother Lear gets to the core of this challenging paradox as we watch the image of authority stripped down to its bare elements, the mother now a child to be cared for by her daughter.
In Mother Lear, daughter Cordelia has two sisters whom we meet only via conversation or the phone. Preoccupied with their own lives (families, kids, PTA meetings), the elder sisters don’t have the time or patience to contend with their mother’s needs. What’s arresting about this scenario in Mother Lear is that it speaks to an aspect of Shakespeare’s King Lear that is often over-looked – Goneril and Regan, so easily dismissed as the demi-devils and hags railed at by their injured father, are also less-loved daughters. What do these sisters owe to a parent who has never put them first? Why should they dismiss their responsibilities to their own children to take care of a parent who’s never loved them fully?
“Reason not the need” is Lear’s answer to this question, else “man’s life is cheap as beasts.” As Mother Lear’s protagonist, like her Shakespearean counterpart, wanders near-naked on a modern heath (the Cal Shakes upper grove), we’re invited to re-think the very meaning and value of being human. Come to the Cal Shakes Upper Grove for a performance at 7 pm Sept 24, 1 pm Sept 29, 7 pm Oct 1 or 7 pm Oct 2. Grab a hot chocolate or an end-of-day glass of wine (yes, you’ve earned it!) from our Cal Shakes café, and, if you’re there half an hour before the show, join me for a pre-show talk on this brilliant play, Mother Lear.
To learn more about Mother Lear, check out the page at the We Players website.
Purchase tickets for the remaining performances at Cal Shakes here.
