Mother Play: A theatrical unravelling of boxes

On July 4, Melbourne’s Southbank Theatre witnessed the arrival of a new classic drama. Paula Vogel’s Mother Play, fresh from its acclaimed Broadway run, opened to a full house and rapturous applause.

What unfolded on stage was no ordinary family drama but a delicately woven narrative between memory and truth, performed with such tenderness and ferocity that it left the audience stunned into silence.

The tale opens quietly, with a single storage box hinting at the memories to come. From that moment, the play spirals through the decades, guided by Martha’s narration as she recounts life with her domineering mother Phyllis and beloved brother Carl in 1960s America.

Their five evictions pile up, the years pass, and the family’s search for security, both physical and emotional, becomes achingly relatable. Ms Vogel’s semi-autobiographical script walks a fine line between biting wit and devastating vulnerability.

At its centre is a triumphant trio. Sigrid Thornton commands the stage as Phyllis Herman, the complicated matriarch whose bitterness, gin-soaked bravado, and unexpected fragility feel chillingly real. Ms Thornton’s portrayal is terrific and magnetic!

Her Phyllis is quietly explosive and layered with a lifetime of withheld sorrow. The wordless moments lingers long after the scene fades, her silent presence conveying more than pages of dialogue ever could.

Yael Stone as Martha delivers an unforgettable performance. She opens the play with sardonic warmth and closes it with a quiet devastation that stills the air. With each gesture and glance, Ms Stone lets us witness Martha’s gradual erosion under the weight of her mother’s love and control. Her physicality carries the emotional heft of the role, making Martha’s journey hauntingly familiar.

Ash Flanders brings light and grace as Carl, the charming, ever-observant sibling navigating his own challenges while holding the family together. His performance glows with intelligence, wit, and pathos. Mr Flanders is terrific in the disco scene and as a teenager when he teaches his sister to protect herself.

Together, Ms Stone and Mr Flanders create a sibling bond marked by deep affection and shared exhaustion. Their scenes shimmer with humour and heartbreak, beautifully capturing the push and pull of familial love.

Director Lee Lewis ensures the storytelling flows with confidence and restraint. Her vision anchors the narrative in truth while allowing space for surreal transitions and emotional pauses. There’s a fluid elegance to her approach, giving the performers room to breathe and the audience time to absorb.

Christina Smith’s set design is a stroke of brilliance. Minimal yet deeply evocative, it changes configuration with each eviction, underscoring the instability that defines this family’s life.

Her costumes, too, are quietly powerful – every outfit tells us something new about the characters’ emotional state and the era they’re drifting through, while Niklas Pajanti’s lighting subtly shifts between memory and present time, illuminating the gaps between what is remembered and what is said.

Kelly Ryall’s score and sound design work in tandem, weaving golden-age melodies with original compositions that act like a heartbeat. However, that one whimsical interlude with “dancing and waving cockroaches” adds an odd dash of magic realism and is slightly off-tone. The disco scene is sheer brilliance, it stands out layering humour, nostalgia, and raw honesty.

More than a play about flawed mothers, their years of unboxed pain, this is a reckoning with identity, survival and generational trauma. It speaks of queerness and womanhood in eras where both were shadowed and silenced. The themes are urgent yet universal, wrapped in a deeply human story that aches with love, regret and resilience.

By the time the curtain falls, Mother Play leaves its mark. It is theatre at its most impactful: finely crafted, exquisitely acted, and utterly transformative.

This Melbourne Theatre Company production is a landmark performance in Melbourne’s cultural calendar and an unmissable testament to the power of live storytelling.

Mother Play runs at the Southbank Theatre until August 9. •