Recalling Mother

Recalling Mother
Checkpoint Theatre. OzAsia Festival. Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. 22-23 September, 2017.

Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed are a pair of performers with their hearts in the right place, and Recalling Mother, at its best, communicates positive feelings and shares useful emotions with its audience, though it does not always completely succeed as a piece of compelling theatre.

Their self-written-and-directed reminiscence of the mothers they deeply love is at its best in the moments when these two women dramatize their search for a mutual understanding between themselves and the parent, partly achieved by way of brilliantly vivid impersonation. Such is the conviction and clarity of these performances, one can certainly believe that the bursts of ill temper shown here have their basis in an experienced reality.

Vintage music, video footage, subtitled passages of Cantonese and Malay: all these elements add texture to the presentation, which is mostly minimalist in visual terms. It can verge on feeling too gentle and wandering to fully sustain itself, but there is ultimately enough passion and intensity here to provide a reasonable emotional balance.

Locating the gentle humour – as well as the drama - in their family’s lives and relations with each other, Wong and Mohamed’s performance constructs a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures by deftly identifying shared concerns and desires: wanting parents to be proud of us, hoping the end of their lives will be as painless as possible. You’ll leave the theatre wanting to give your mum a big hug.

Anthony Vawser

Images (top) by Joel Lim at Calibre Pictures & Ideas and (lower) courtesy of Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay, photo by Jack Yam (Lime Pixels).

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