THE Mother, adapted from Ia novel by Maxim is a very simple play, and all the better for that. A peasant widow, illiterate and subdued by power and religion in the ways of her class, is drawn into distributing revolutionary leaflets to protect her son from having to do so dangerous a chore. From there she moves on, attending a demonstration at which workers are killed. She learns to read, to see why her leaflets are so dangerous to those in authority.
Finally she knows, better than Marx or any theorist, for she has lived the injustices she has only now learned to recognise and her life thenceforth takes the path of protest.
She converts many others to her cause, and alienates more who believe her to be seditious and anti religion. The great experiment of unity of the workers is about to begin.
As directed by Helen Casey, the production is severely simple. The large room is entirely white, with white drapes on windows and rear wall.
All the actors are dressed in white, and the effect is to enable them to play multiple roles without jarring identity problems also to distance the dramatic impact of the work in typically Brechtian style.
We are invited to watch, listen and think rather than empathise. Joan Brosnan Walsh plays the woman with a sense of truth, of her representative reality.
The rest is really communal endeavour, a subordination of individual acting prowess to the delivery of the message.
A few performers still shine the ever improving Pepe Roche, Steve Nealon, Brendan McDonald and Sonya Anne Kelly make an impact, but there are no weak links in this treatment of a seminal work which still has something to say.