No laughing mater

Mum’s The Word is quite cutely described as a ‘hit comedy for anyone who ever had a mother!’ But, more seriously, whether or not its subject matter – ‘exploring the essence of motherhood’ – immediately lights your fire the fact is that the play has quite deservedly been a smash on two continents and one certainly can’t help but find commendable a key concept behind the production of the show.

Namely the requirement that each of the six actors who play the lead roles “actually be mothers” and the fact that rehearsals, fittingly enough, are fitted around the requirements of their real-life roles as mothers!
To put this in another perspective look at it this way. Most female actors who are actually mothers will tell you they too often lose gigs because they chose to put their children first, for whatever reasons.
All of which makes Mum’s The Word even more appropriate because the play originally started out in Canada as a piece of improvisation by five actors and one director pondering over this, and many related issues, in terms of being mothers.
Ironically enough, the Irish production, which stars Charlotte Brady, Lise-Ann McLoughlin, Briana Corrigan, Isobel Mahon, Jenny Maher and Eileen Gibbons, is directed by a man, Wayne Harrison.
So is he in heaven or hell in such a setting!
“With six women?” He responds, laughing. “Actually, one of the plays original writers, Barbara Pollard, is here with us and the stage manager also is a woman so there are eight women in all and I’ve been working on this project on and off now for seven years so I think I am an honorary other by this stage and the whole experience has been fairly blissful.”
Indeed. But is it also a learning curve for Wayne and might it be, by extension, for many men who could otherwise be put off by the theme of the play?
“It definitely is a learning curve,” he says. “I certainly know far more about umbilical chords and epidurals and even at the most basic level, it has made me, say, more tolerant of mothers struggling on trains with their screaming infants whereas once I would have said, ‘Oh can’t you shut those kids up?’ And even though the play is basically a comedy and has hilarious anecdotes, at the same time, a couple of the women go into quite dark places and articulate feelings and emotions that maybe a lot of mothers and, indeed, fathers, might not have been prone to express before. Read any newspaper and you’ll learn about many others who have taken extreme methods to deal with their own depression or the pressures of being parents of Special Needs children, whatever. And part of the job of Mum’s The Word is to try make people understand how mothers could be taken to the brink of such actions. As in one of the characters rakes us through a day in her life, which starts off a normal way but through a series of mishaps and let-downs leaves her at the point of eruption where she could easily, if she wasn’t so good a mother, take it out on children and even inflict some damage on them but doesn’t.”
That said, Wayne stresses that Mum’s The Word is “essentially” funny and that “somehow it seems to fit wherever the play is staged and women acting in it and watching totally relate to what’s going on.” He also believes that the fact that he play has its genesis in actual experiences means “There is a lack of artifice and a sense of truth to it” that also is the hallmark of the show. So how are the Irish actors?
“Fantastic” says Wayne, enthusiastically. “I am really happy with them. But the fact is that deep down, as I say, the play contains truths and observations that would apply whether the actors in question are Canadian, Irish, and German. There is a certain amount of cultural tweaking we have to do for the Irish production but overall it’s the same show that, as the Press release says, has been a smash on two continents. So I’m really looking forward to touring with this show around Ireland, after its run at the Pavilion Theatre here in Dun Laoghaire. I really do suspect that Irish audiences will live Mum’s the word as much as audiences elsewhere have.”