I Hate You My Mother

Jeanette Cronin, an edgy, unsentimental actor who I’ve long admired, is turning into a productive playwright. This latest work though is more a showreel of vignettes than a cohesive play.

Its promised theme is the murderous impact of child sexual abuse passed quietly on through the generations.  We leap back and forth between four developing stories, a gothic manor house tale of a father raping his daughter, an horrific murder investigation in Oklahoma, a nursing home of demented memories in Liverpool, and a boy’s allegations against a female babysitter in Morisset, NSW.

It’s all a cacophony of travelling accents, high drama and occasional, lurid poetry, with Cronin always the driving character and NIDA graduate Simon Glommen Bostard in support.  Thematic connections or meaning between the stories (other than those demonic web-feet) are few and the constant splicing cuts away our empathy for victim or perpetrator.  

Kim Hardwick moves the play with agility and Tyler Ray Hawkins’ chromatic dark set with Martin Kinnane vivid strip and detailed spot lighting delivers a high production value. So too does the rising tension of Nate Edmondson’s sound. 

Cronin’s performances are artful if arch and Bostard while an appealing performer doesn’t always reach the gravitas necessary to counter her mad characters.  

I Hate You My Mother is an inexplicable title for this dark entertainment, a flashback perhaps to Cronin’s repeated role as Bette Davis.  The play opens a new season at what is the 20^th anniversary of the Old Fitzroy Theatre in Woolloomooloo.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Rupert Reid