Review: Motherland at Live Theatre, Newcastle

Sep 23 2009 by Barbara Hodgson, The Journal

WITH unremitting stories in the news about the deaths of UK soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s easy to lose sight of the even greater number of those at home whose lives are devastated by the loss.

For every death there are, of course, grieving parents, siblings and partners – not to mention children and friends – and Steve Gilroy’s play tells real-life stories, personal yet universal, from the North East.

The experiences of 20 women, via 16 characters, are laid bare on a sparse stage by just four actresses: the tip of an ever-growing iceberg perhaps but all the more affecting for its intensity.

Crossing back and forth in time, conversations sometimes overlapping, Rachel Adamson, Charlie Binns, Helen Embleton and Eleanor Clarke switch between roles as mother, daughter, sister, girlfriend and wife in perfectly pitched performances which leave a lump in the throat one minute and raise a laugh the next.

Alongside regret and measured anger, we witness enormous pride and happy memories of a son or daughter: an emotional journey making for utterly absorbing theatre.

There’s misplaced guilt too: the mother, for instance, who encouraged her teenage son to take up an army career instead of a football signing which might only last 18 months. He signed up, surviving precisely 18 months in the army before he was killed.