La mare

Teatre

informació obra


Intèrprets:
Emma Vilarasau, Pep Pla, Oscar Castellvi, Ester Cort
Escenografia:
Beatriz San Juan
Vestuari:
Beatriz San Juan
So:
Alex Polls
Composició musical:
Maika Makovski
Il·luminació:
David Bofarull
Traducció:
Ernest Riera
Companyia:
L'Estenedor
Direcció:
David Laín Devant
Sinopsi:

Es pot estimar massa un fill, fins al punt de perdre les ganes de viure en el moment en què marxa de casa per viure la seva vida? La mare és una obra directa que parla de la dificultat i el dolor que sent una dona en perdre el seu rol de mare al llarg dels anys. Emma Vilarasau és l’Anne, una mare entregada que ho perd tot menys la capacitat de patir i somniar.

Crítica: La mare

18/02/2017

Emma Vilarasau captivates in this dark drama of a mother in crisis.

per Alx Phillips

In a 2015 British production of La Mère, a contemporary French play by Florian Zeller, actress Gina McKee appeared ‘ghost-like’ in the lead (The Guardian). In this Catalan production of the play, directed by Andrés Lima, Emma Vilarasau takes on the complex role of Anne, a mother in her 50s who suffers a personal crisis after her grown-up son leaves home. 

Catalonia lends itself incredibly well to the play, says Lima: “here, beyond a façade of formality there’s the sense of something trapped and wounded…”  A companion piece to Zeller’s Molière Award-winning Le Père (The Father, 2012), about an elderly man with Alzheimer’s, this 2010 play uses a similar technique: scenes repeat as if continually rewriting themselves from a different perspective, “mirroring each other in a kind of schizophrenia,” says Lima. Beatriz San Juan’s set is shut in by massive windows, beyond which an unsettling blue light exudes, continually redirecting the mother to the kitchen table in its centre, with its red potted plant, quirky ornamental candleholder, and, as the scenes crowd up claustrophobically, multiple coffee pots.

An atmosphere of growing menace is enhanced by music that calls on the vocals of Yma Sumac, a 1950’s Peruvian singer who produced sounds of the jungle with her voice. It makes for an unsettling soundscape, as Anne’s reactions suddenly shift from absurd and hysterical to subdued and repressed. “This is a woman in an extreme state that you could call many things: a breakdown, a depression, a melancholic state, a middle-age crisis… the play defies her as archetype.” On the contrary, says Lima, psychological labels with their tendency to distance and diminish trauma are denied us; instead shifts in tone and the dynamic between characters create a sense of disorientation, casting doubt on what’s real and what she imagines.

The Mother’s centrality in the play is not to undermine the crucial role of the other characters: parts that seem flat yet subtle changes have seismic effects. Her husband (Pep Pla) is patronising in the first scene, threatening in its repetition, standing over her at table and rolling up his sleeves. Her son Nicolas (Oscar Castellví) is petulant or playful, taking his cues from his father. His girlfriend Élodie (Ester Cort) is strikingly tall and confident, she seems to mock the mother with her independence.

It’s a poignant production in a context where the tight-knit Catholic concept of the family group is crumbling, yet there’s a universality to 'La Mare' that goes beyond her context, gender and role, says Lima: “We’ve all been through times in which anxiety overcomes us, when we lose touch with what the point of it all is.” Anne asks this question of her life of motherhood in the play, and its implications are both obscure and profound.