Fresh from its 2024 Broadway triumph, where it earned four Tony nominations and won two Drama Desk Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award, it’s time for Melbourne audiences to be treated to this captivating drama by Paula Vogel and starring Sigrid Thornton.
The bonds of love are tested in this expansive yet intimate drama rich with humour and wit, starring film, theatre and television legend Sigrid Thornton, alongside Yael Stone, Ash Flanders and directed by Lee Lewis.
Careening through the twentieth century – from the Muzak-drenched 60s through the sexual revolution, disco era, and New Age movements that followed – Mother Play charts the personal upheavals of one family trying to find a place for themselves amid the slings and arrows of a changing world.
It’s 1962 and Martha and Carl are unpacking. Again. Since their deadbeat dad ditched them and stole the family’s savings, they’ve been following their fierce mother Phyllis from apartment to apartment. Cockroaches, landlords and snooty neighbours be damned. Phyllis is determined to live life on her terms. They’re moving on up.
Mother Play is a gift for actors, allowing them to muster the full range of human emotion in service of a story that cannot fail to stir the heart.
Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright whose plays include Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions, Indecent, How I Learned to Drive, The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, The Baltimore Waltz, Hot ’n’ Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession and A Civil War Christmas.
She served as Director of Playwriting at Brown University and as the O’Neill Chair of Playwriting at Yale School of Drama. Awards include two Tony nominations, the American Theatre Hall of Fame Award, two Obies, the Lily Award, the NY Drama Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim and a Pew Charitable Trust Award. Her memoir, Travels Without Carl, will be published by Penguin Press.
Director: Lee Lewis | Featuring: Yael Stone, Ash Flanders, Sigrid Thornton | Set & Costume Designer: Christina Smith| Lighting Designer: Niklas Pajanti | Composer & Sound Designer: Kelly Ryall | Voice & Dialect Coach: Amy Hume | Associate Set & Costume Designer: Bianca Pardo | Assistant Composer & Sound Designer: John Sharp | AV Designer: Nevin Howell | Movement Consultant: Jonathan Homsey | Stage Manager: Oriana Papa | Assistant Stage Manager: Jenny Le | Assistant Stage Manager/Dresser: Jessie McGuigan | Writer: Paula Vogel
Mother Play
Southbank Theatre – The Sumner, Southbank Boulevard, Southbank
Season: 4 July – 2 August 2025 (previews: 30 June – 3 July)
Information and Bookings: www.mtc.com.au
Image: Sigrid Thornton stars in Mother Play – photo by Jo Duck