by Doris Lessing
seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 4 May 2015
The play, directed by Paul Miller (the Artistic Director of the theatre), features Clare Holman as Myra, Joel MacCormack as Tony and Susannah Harker as Milly. It was written in 1958, just before Lessing embarked on her novel 'The Golden Notebook' (1962).
Myra, heavily involved in the campaign against the H-bomb, and with a lifetime of political activism behind her, is completely non-plussed by the apolitical attitude of her son Tony, just returned from National Service. He affects complete scorn for her chaotic and bohemian lifestyle, and is woundingly critical of all her attempts at a rapprochement. Her assumptions that he as a young man must want freedom and autonomy he sees as just one more example of her inescapable manipulative influence over him. His apparent desire to be an electrician (instead of an architect) living in a 'normal' tidy household with an attractively made-up and dignified mother she sees as irrelevant and insulting immaturity.
