After a successful 6 week regional tour which apparently sold out every performance, Smaller has finally arrived in London with its larger than life stars, Dawn French and Alison Moyet. Increasingly rare for the commercial West End, awash with revivals, movie re-workings and musical warhorses, Smaller is a piece of new writing by debut playwright Carmel Morgan, whose credits have been scripting television dramas such as Coronation Street and Shameless.
The play centres on the fractured Clulow family. Bernice (French) and Cath (Moyet) are very different sisters. Bernice is the daughter who stayed behind to look after their widowed, disabled mother – a task which has become a duty and a millstone over the past twenty years. Cath, in contrast, had a talent for singing so flew the nest with dreams of stardom but has ended up humiliated, performing karaoke hits to drunken hen parties on the “Costa Chlamydia”.
Maureen (June Watson), their mother, may have become physically disabled but her mind is still very active. Confined to her Oxford bungalow, reliant on her daughter to lift and lay her between bed, chair and toilet, she craves stimulation and interaction.
Compulsively watching through the net curtains for the latest instalment of suburbia beyond her window, Maureen’s day is timed according to the start and finish of TV programmes like Murder She Wrote and Quincy. She absorbs every minutiae of her daughters’ lives from Bernice’s tales of “biscuit wars” in the school staffroom to Cath’s postcards about binning the latest “twat with a plat”.
Maureen’s conversations flow like Joycean monologues - streams of consciousness that spray the dramatis personae of her life like tickertape. Morgan skilfully depicts the relentlessness of Maureen and Bernice’s situation like Becket’s two tramps in Godot. They have long gone beyond the point of listening to each other and are waiting for a resolution to be provided. The idea of Mother going into a home is mooted but is dismissed and Morgan deftly shows how the behaviour of carer and the cared soon become habitualised.
Although there are brilliant one-liners and many laugh-out-loud moments, these are interwoven with realistic and upsetting scenes of home care. The epiphanic question posed by Bernice, “Shall I push your piles back in now?” captures the delicate balancing act which combines dark humour with the pathos of what’s happening.
As the frustration and the claustrophobia slowly rise in long extended scenes between French and Watson, the only respite is provided by snapshot scenes of Moyet abroad.
Unusual but effective, Cath reveals her character through songs (impressive and moving original material penned by Moyet herself and songwriting partner Pete Glenister) which are interpolated throughout the play. Maureen refers to her daughter as “a breath of fresh air” and this is how Cath’s appearances are received by the audiences.
All three parts are written to play to the performers’ strength, but they also challenge them to leave their comfort zones. June Watson has swathes of dialogue, as befits a seasoned stage performer, but she has to make Maureen Clulow neither a monster nor a victim. Alison Moyet has tremendous stage presence as a singer but in her first serious dramatic role, she is required to hold her own and deliver authentic soul-searching as Cath. Dawn French has many moments of comedic aplomb but in an exacting role, she has to alienate the audience’s sympathy with Bernice’s querulousness. It would be hard to find a stronger trio on a West End stage.
Whilst covering a small slice of life, Carmel Morgan’s script poses some big questions. Who is trapped – the housebound mother, the home-tied carer or the daughter who followed failed dreams? What is the nature of mothering? Maureen is proud of both her daughters (“You are both Golden Bollocks”) yet is insensitive in the even-handed dispensing of her love; Bernice mothers Maureen but the inescapability of her duty she has imposed on herself has turned familiarity to contempt; as Cath casts a maternal eye over her sister, worrying how she will face the future after her Mum’s death, how much is this out of guilt from years of absence?
The unflinching subject matter will not please everyone. It tackles some of society’s darkest fears which many would rather occur behind the curtains of suburbia, out of sight and mind. There are no simple answers offered.
In Smaller, there are no heroes or villains - only human beings struggling through the daily life choices we all must make. That Kathy Burke’s detailed, entertaining and compassionate production makes us face those themes is a small triumph for the West End.
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