"My Mother Said …' is of a quite different species from the Wilde. Lauded as a late twentieth-century masterpiece, placed on the school and university exam lists, the play examines four related women in their mother-daughter relationships throughout four generations and over sixty years. Different lifestyles are explored, from the prim (and, seemingly, relatively fun and carefree) 1920s to the angst-ridden 1950s, the more liberated 1970s and the inter- and post-Thatcher later years in the late 1980s.

The play had been heralded as her "all-time favourite' by an intelligent and well-read good friend of ours, though I had never heard of Keatley or her work. Despite having now seen this excellent and sensitive production (though not yet read the published text) I am, probably to the horror of many – and to Rachel's palpable disgust), not impressed with the piece.

In the course of the action, the maternal and other relationships of the four women, in soliloquy, in twos and threes and, also, all four of them, are portrayed. These narratives, not chronologically represented, are punctuated with flashbacks to a primal childhood which takes place on, evocatively, "The Wasteground', which is reminiscent of Eliot's bleak poems "The Waste Land', and also of Macbeth's witch scenes, and "blasted heaths'.

The difficulties of being an individual, a woman, a mother, a daughter, any relative are presented at different time periods from the Blitz in urban Manchester to prosperous Surrey suburbia in the years of Thatcherite plenty over forty years on. Plus ça change, however, the less the characters seem to develop. I did not feel that any of the successive generations of women learns anything about themselves or their spouses (we never see any men in the play though Doris and Margaret both have husbands, and Jackie a brief partner).

The same mistakes, inadequacies and failings perpetuate themselves throughout the decades. I saw little evidence that any of the four women learned anything about herself, her problems, her relationships – or indeed about life. Their ability to communicate adequately was seriously dysfunctional. Nowhere was there a glimmer of hope, of learning, or reconciliation.

It was as if the nihilism and pessimism of Samuel Beckett and the 1950s ‘Kitchen Sink' school were trying to attain epic or tragic heights – without the dignity of a Lady Macbeth, Cordelia or Hardy's Tess. Or the humility. In short, a loosely-written, bleak, powerful but largely unconvincing play which – for this reviwer at least – does not really succeed. I did not find it at all inappropriate that the author's name had been omitted from the programme.

But enough of that – what the text lacked, the performance more than compensated for. The text does, nonetheless, provide ample opportunity for the cast, direction and crew, and this production was exemplary on so many fronts. The migration of the dynasty from the Manchester area to the South East evinced some deft delineations of accent and atmosphere between the grimy, urban North and the prosperous, more urban but not urbane South.

The varied and appropriate costumes, from Katrina McAulley, also highlighted the north-south divide, and gave added strength to the characters. Director Carla Dean co-ordinated varied and evocative movement and gestures which also firmly ‘placed' the period and its styles. Towards the end, when Doris the matriarch is a young bride-to-be, I was forcefully reminded of my own late Auntie Clare, who was also a stunningly attractive young schoolteacher and in fact from Chorley.

This stylisation is all the more remarkable, considering that four young women (presumably all around the early twenties mark) were able to convincingly portray girls and women aged between the pre-teens and passing 80s. Indeed the whole production team was female, and whilst I feel the text suffers without a man in the cast, the overall production most certainly did not.

In short, this was a very polished, able and convincing production of what struck me as, at best, a flawed but fertile play.

Copyright © 3 February 2004 Michael Nunn