While some of us – not me boss! – are slowly easing ourselves back into working life after Christmas, Gina McKee and the cast of The Mother are hard at it in the rehearsal room. We have the pictures to prove it.
What can we tell about the play from the writer of 2015 London hit The Father – which returns to London early this year before heading out on tour – from these new pictures? Well, there’ll be a pensive look or two in the production, I expect. McKee, Richard Clothier and Frances McNamee are all at it in Mark Douet’s photos.
The play finds McKee playing a mother who adored looking after her children. Now her offspring are all grown up with lives and loves of their own, and she spends hours on end by herself. As she does so, her world begins to twist around her. Has her son really returned? Should she be concerned about her husband’s suspicious actions?
Blurring the lines between reality and imagination might be a stretch for us in early January – our brains are still a befuddled mess of fairy lights, bubbly and Christmas pudding – but the show doesn’t hit the Tricycle Theatre stage until 21 January, when we’ll be fully functioning members of theatregoing society again and eager to see what McKee and co have concocted.
Until then, we’ll be content with those contemplative expressions.
You can book tickets for The Mother through the theatre’s website.