Mum's the Word at The Civic

By FRANCIS TILL

By all accounts, audiences have been consistently enthusiastic about this play throughout its 10-year history, while critics have often hated it. There are good reasons for both outcomes.

First, the audience on Friday, in which women outnumbered men by at least nine to one, was unambiguously enthralled by the production, which wags have been calling the Mummy Monologues. There were frequent bursts of spontaneous applause and no punchline sank without scoring.

Mum is a comedy of recognition, and the audience recognised the experiences of the six women on the stage, often with a pronounced and almost painfully comic sense of rue. In that, it's also a survivor's comedy, one that works best with audiences that know intimately what there is in mothering (or close-in fathering, in my case) that requires surviving.

That said, too much of the text is saccharine froth laid down over ersatz coffee in an attempt to give it bite.

Rather than stick with humour and reaching, perhaps, for irony, the authors (six Canadian actresses who, the programme says, collaboratively spawned the play after finding themselves with 10 children under 5) make clumsy grabs at gravitas, brewing insights of the type one might expect to find inside a Hallmark card. "Anger is so loud and love is so quiet," and lines of similar ilk, belong more on fridge magnets than a stage.

But director Annie Davies McCubbin and her dream cast of six well-seasoned performers mine the rest of the work which is most of the play - for every bit of gold it harbours, saving the evening rather completely.

Blythe Duff's dry and deliciously bitter wit shines like polished crystal and never fails to completely engage the audience.

Tahei Simpson's poise, beauty and elegance are used brilliantly to set off several scaldingly funny counterpoint themes she takes on with considerable courage and apparent relish. Rebecca Hobbs' exploration of sleep obsessions is exquisite physical comedy. Jackie Clark's breast duel skit and Victoria Alcock's exploration of the finer points of mush brain are great fun, while Michele A'Court's wisecracking character consistently proves that ordinary isn't.