'night, Mother: A Play (Mermaid Dramabook)
by Marsha Norman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Marsha NormanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1983-08-01
ISBN: 0374521387
Number of pages: 96
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Book Reviews of 'night, Mother: A Play (Mermaid Dramabook)
Book Review: One of the Most Fearsome Plays of the Past Thirty Years
Summary: 5 Stars
Marsha Norman's 1983 Pulitizer Prize-winning 'NIGHT, MOTHER is frequently described as a play "about suicide." Although the play does indeed deal with suicide, this is actually a shallow designation; it is about a lot of things, but most particularly control: who has it, who wants it, and the extent a person will go to obtain it.
The play involves two characters: Thelma, an elderly woman, and Jessie, her middle-aged daughter. They have lived together in an isolated house on a rural road for a number of years. Thelma describes herself as "a plain country woman;" she enjoys life in a fundamental way, not expecting more than she already knows, watching television, knitting, nibbling at sweets, and enjoying regular visits from her son and his family. Jessie, who suffers from epilepsy and is divorced, has become something of a recluse, and her life consists largely of managing her mother's home and thinking on the past. One evening, as the play begins, Jessie informs Thelma that she has decided to kill herself right after she gives Thelma her weekly manicure.
Thelma does not take Jessie seriously at first; clearly there have been too many scenes between the two for Jessie's statement to have any real meaning for her. But Jessie is serious indeed, and over the course of an hour and a half the play evolves into a battle of wits, Jessie determined to kill herself, Thelma equally determined to prevent her from it. In the process, we learn quite a bit about the family and their lives and the various emotional and factual secrets the women have hidden from each other over the years.
The play is brilliantly constructed, performed in "real time" without any scene changes or intermission; the characters--and the equally vivid people they discuss but whom we never see--are equally well rendered. There are moments are laughter, even more moments of insight, but the play is progressively intense, progressively dark, with all the power of a noose that slowly tightens around your neck. One of the most fearsome bits of theatre of the past thirty years or so, easily the equal of such legendary works as Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Summary of 'night, Mother: A Play (Mermaid Dramabook)
'night, Mother is a taut and fluid drama that addresses different emotions and special relations. By one of America's most talented playwrights, this play won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, four Tony nominations, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
'night, Mother had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1982. It opened on Broadway in March 1983, directed by Tom Moore and starring Anne Pitoniak and Kathy Bates; a film, starring Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, was released in 1986.
'night, Mother had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1982. It opened on Broadway in March 1983, directed by Tom Moore and starring Anne Pitoniak and Kathy Bates; a film, starring Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, was released in 1986.
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