“In Two Minds.” Female Led Irish Storytelling

In Two Minds, produced by Dublin’s celebrated multi-award winning Fishamble, is playing at Traverse Theatre, Scotland’s home for new writing. Dramatist and performer Joanne Ryan has created a taut two-hander, exploring a mother-daughter relationship. The play opens as the mother (Pom Boyd), simply called Mother, enters the tiny studio flat of her forty-year-old daughter (Daughter, Karen McCartney). The set (design by Alyson Cummings) is minimum; a large double bed, a desk, a laptop, a chair, some shelves. Opening an old battered suitcase, Mother proceeds to place her possessions very deliberately, everywhere in the flat, seemingly oblivious that this is her daughter’s territory. Daughter protests, but to no avail. What is Mother doing there? Only gradually do we find out that she is moving in temporarily, while at her own house, they are building an extension. Slowly, tell-tale signs point to how strange and unfeeling the mother is; she sits alone in the double bed, reeling off a long list of people she is praying for; she barges in on her daughter’s zoom business meeting; she phones three times in quick succession when she knows her daughter is in another meeting. At which, the young woman is at the end of her tether, and, as an audience member, I was left not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Mother experiences highs as she dances crazily to loud rock music, inviting her daughter to do the same, and lows in a nightmarish scene when at 2am she can’t sleep. She is delirious, moaning under the sheets, and Daughter is unable to console her. Mother also offers us an occasional flashback into her past, such as a childhood memory of her destroying a toy shop because she felt worthless and undeserving of it. Later, Mother’s aggression spills out as she scathingly mocks her daughter for not having a steady job, not being married, not having a decent house and drinking too much. The absolute sparseness of the grey set suddenly takes on new meaning as the daughter’s life and career path are put under the spotlight. After which, the daughter leaves the flat to go and stay with her boyfriend. On her return we see the pair attempting some sort of reconciliation and promising, as the mother puts it, to ‘talk about the way I am’. The daughter’s “We can try” chimed weary and half-hearted, suggesting the unlikelihood of this ever happening. The beauty of the play is that Joanne Ryan makes no attempt to label the mother, who is evidently bipolar. We are shown her illness through her actions, monologues and the daughter’s repeated “You are sick”. The author has chosen to probe unflinchingly into this bitter sweet mother-daughter relationship, steering clear of passing judgment. Director Sarah Jane Scaife masterfully directs, while Pom Boyd and Karen McCartney give two superb performances.

In Two Minds, produced by Fishamble, playing at Traverse Theatre.