All About My Mother

Juicelog Monday 100907: Dan E, David M, myself and an Ozzie pop singer by the name of Kylie sat in the fourth room of the stalls at the Old Vic watching Samuel Adamson’s theatre remix of Pedro Almodovar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre. The first half of the play follows the sequence of events as depicted by the film with numerous set changes to accompany the introduction of the characters. The positioning was at times questionable, as we were sat so close to the front there were a few moments where it was hard to view some of the scenes that took place towards the back of the stage.

Throughout the scenes Manuela’s dead son Esteban comes back in a ghost form revealing how he would like to be closer to his mother. What this does is try to guide the audience along the emotional journey but this didn’t work because what I wanted to feel was the raw feelings of Manuela’s hidden past and not the diarized spirit in regret.

Sister Rosa’s death occurs in the second half which didn’t move me at all. Her transition from leaving the nunnery to seeking maternal companionship after discovering she is pregnant and HIV positive felt slight and left me feeling disconnected from her plight. Diana Rigg’s diva like Huma outshines Mark Gatiss’s overdone Agrado. The whole thing rounds off with the women sitting together celebrating how this bunch of females came together.