Barbican Theatre, London
January 24, 2018
Charlotte Kasner
In Moeder, Peeping Tom turn their prying eyes and poking noses to the subject of motherhood. No hearts and flowers or even Oedipal complexes here, just an examination of relationships with mothers in all its dystopian horror.
There is something of a narrative thread running through the evening, but it is the episodic nature – expect the unexpected – that delights. Moments that should be bizarre take on a logic all of their own as every performer believes utterly in the world which they inhabit and so do we, even if it is all rather wonky.
There are some brilliant theatrical devices, although always at the service of the plot, such as it is, and never there to glorify the cleverness. We believe that a pool of light on the floor is in fact a pool of water, deep enough to nearly drown two characters, one seen in flashback because of the superb soundtrack. The rain outside thunders down and the drips plop inside until they suddenly co-ordinate and their pitch echoes the music. Vivaldi, Bach and Schubert as you’ve never heard them before. It is probably not wise to try any of it at home, but I guarantee that you will want to next time that you are stuck on hold listening to a tinny version of Autumn (think rattlesnake with hiccoughs).
Photo Herman Sorgeloos
Moeder opens with an agonal gasp as mother/wife number one croaks her last and we watch through the window as her coffin lid is nailed down. Later we’ll watch through the same window as her daughter gives birth – loudly and sparing us none of the revolting process.
A central role is played by a vending machine. Just a vending machine to you and me and most of the other characters on stage except one. She sings a torch song into its neon depths, then performs a striptease, then….well suffice to say, the machine short circuits. As we watch the hand pallet truck make its funereal way across the stage to take it to its final resting place, we realise that we too have anthropomorphised the machine.
A body is pulled out on a rack from a flap cut into the set. The girl in the mortuary is viewed for the last time and shut back in her drawer. The mother walks slowly away. We have already seen her birth pangs and agonies over seven years of incubation. Father takes his temper out on the vending machine before its demise.
Grandfather celebrates his 70th birthday, telling us that he has seen off his mother then two wives and now lost his coffee machine. “I guess you could say that I’m not very lucky with women,” he reckons.
Slowly the flood returns, the eternally mopping woman, the singing nun come to life from a painting, the demented mother, the museum curator and his father, all go back into the mad box from which they were conjured.
The brilliant soundtrack is as much a character as the people although perhaps not one that you would want on a desert island.
Moeder by Peeping Tom is at the Barbican Theatre to January 27. Visit www.barbican.org.uk or call 020 7638 8891 for details and tickets.