“Have you ever shoplifted anything?” The elderly woman asking the question doesn’t look as if she really wants to know the answer. Her daughter is more game, telling of an incident that took place almost 50 years ago in the Muswell Hill Woolworths. Not so much a show as a theatricalised version of a truth game, this piece created by Complicite’s creative learning department and Toronto’s Why Not Theatre has no actors, simply four sets of mothers and daughters, ranging in age from 15 to their 80s, who have come together over a period of four weeks to explore their relationships and lives.
It works on the premise that other people’s lives are always completely fascinating. The audience sit around the edges of the room while the pairs of mothers and daughters take it in turns to sit at a central table and ask each other questions read from cards.
They don’t know in advance what the questions will be. Do I remind you of your younger self? Have you ever felt we favoured your younger siblings? Have you ever disagreed with my dad on how to bring me up? Afterwards the audience sits at tables, each hosted by a mother and daughter, eat dahl and cake, and ask their own questions.
The women are self-selected, so they don’t represent a cross section of society, being the kind of people who sign up to arts mailing lists. The evening is too rushed – it probably needs to be durational to have full impact and formatted differently – and the emphasis on religion in the questions feels imposed and skews the conversation away from the central relationship. But it’s a lovely idea, a simple act of generosity on the part of all those involved that made me leave BAC mourning my own mother and all the questions I never asked while there was still time.
- At Battersea Arts Centre until 6 June. Box office: 020-7223 2222.
