For all its immediate recognitions and acerbic lines, the play didn't strike me as inspired, not like the far better structured Visiting Mr Green . This is soap-opera whimsy and revenge that reads like a TV script, as is often the case in the theatre these days. It needs more time in the laboratory and a detached eye to tighten the text and solve weaknesses in timing. Baron's direction is ordinary. As he lays the foundations for the matriarch's fall and offer of redemption, he fails to deliver the sting that I suspect he was striving for.
Actors often stand around the margins with too little to do.
It doesn't help that the stage at the SBW Independent Theatre and its poor correlation with the audience also robs the work of the intimate engagement it needs. As it stands, Mother's Day is a predictable contrivance with some funny lines and a nicely absurdist tone in its dissection of a peculiarly arch, well-heeled breed reminiscent of Edward Albee but, in Betty Lucas's delightfully doddery Aunt Marilyn, veering into Absolutely Fabulous territory. Lucas, looking quite demented at times, offers many of the easiest laughs of the night while conveying a sense of the character's selfless, pathetically cocooned, allegiance to her elder ruling sister Estelle. So much of her performance, apart from the absent-minded buffoonery and shuffles of the feet, is expressed in her eyes. Mother's Day ends with the promise of conciliation, but not until Estelle's comfort zone has come crashing down.