'Night Mother. by Marsha Norman, Marsha Norman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of 'Night Mother.
Book Review: Gaining an Insight on a Difficult Topic
Summary: 5 Stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this play. I watched the film awhile back, and since I wanted to change choose different films for my Film Appreciation class, I decided to review the play before adding 'Night, Mother to my list. What a powerful play. It sheds light on a very difficult subject. Jesse, the main character, makes the decision to "get off the bus early" after careful thought. She shows that some people contemplate this critical experience probably more carefully than buying a house or a car. Her decision is hardly spontaneous or emotional, nothing that I imagined at all. The power of the read helped me to decide to buy the video later on. I also ended up buying a collection of Marsha Norman's other plays, hoping that I will duplicate the insight gained by reading this play.Book Review: I'm tired, I'm hurt, I'm sad, I feel used.
Summary: 5 Stars
`Night Mother, a 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning play deserves just that! This one act play with simply two characters was unlike something I have read. The play draws on emotional dialogue, an unpleasant subject of suicide and the challenge to convince one not to do it. What is prize winning about the dramatic story is the realistic conversational tones and often painful sounds. It is the exchange of normal everyday dialogue, intermixed with riveting rationalization, pleading, bargaining, and coming to terms with life as it shall be. For the theatrical onstage drama, a clock is visible to the audience that indicates the action takes place in one evening and with no intermission. Time is of the essence.
The drama takes place in the early 80's in a small home, and one main character is Jessie, a 40ish woman with epilepsy, was deserted by her husband, and her son is a teenage criminal whose whereabouts are unknown. The only other character is her mother, whom Jessie lives with and Jessie, somewhat, does caregiving.
In the midst of Jessie carefully and strategically planning her suicide, she is nonchalantly taking care of last minute obligations for her mother, like doing mother's nails. Included in the planning, is a list of instructions so mother can locate everything needed after Jessie's suicide takes place. As mother tries to reason and rationalize and beg, Jessie conducts herself normally, making the preparations and letting nothing interfere. Here, we learn about Jessie, her dead father, why she was deserted, her son, and much more. Then the author transfers the dialogue with brilliancy..... This is wonderful, sad, emotional and powerful.
Movie version with superb acting!
See the movie version with Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft. It is rare that I see a version that equals the book! This is powerful. 'night, Mother.
Another wonderful play about death and dying is by Michael
Cristofer, a Pulitzer Prize Shadow Box: A Drama in Two Acts and the film version directed by Paul Newman The Shadow Box. It examines the 5stages of grieving one goes through as they are dying. These stages are also displayed by the living members, the loved ones. Rizzo
Book Review: Terse, Direct, and Chilling
Summary: 5 Stars
Convinced she has no control over her own life, Jessie Cates resolves to end it. But this is not an impulse decision. She has spent months carefully laying the groundwork so that when she is gone, her needy mother Thelma will be able to carry on. Now nothing is left but to make sure Mama is aware of what's going down so she can prepare herself for when it happens.
Since its first production in 1983, this play has ascended to the ranks of theatrical classics for its almost operatic language, its intimate one-on-one tension, and its shocking denouement. The most stunning surprise in this one-act is its lack of surprise. The crisis point is already past when the play begins; what we're left with isn't conflict so much as conflagration.
As tensions run high, Jessie and Thelma lock themselves into a downward spiral of emotional revelation and high-strung confrontation. Personal disclosures come out with a degree of quiet honesty that many current histrionic playwrights would shy from like a branding iron. And Jessie proves to be one of the most strong-willed characters in theatre for the last generation.
Though remarkably short, this play is extremely compact. Not one word is wasted. And despite the dense subtext, the refreshingly direct language makes a break from all the recent plays that need to be decoded to be understood. This DPS edition includes updates the author made for the 2004 Broadway revival, bringing some of the dated language into the 21st Century.
This play plows a field so unique that subsequent playwrights have fled from this level of stunning lucidity. There is precious little else quite like it in the current theatrical scene. Terse, candid, and powerful, "'Night, Mother" casts a shadow on every writer currently working.
Book Review: Whose Life IS it, anyway?
Summary: 4 Stars
This play presents an amazing debate on personal autonomy -- our right to do what we will with our own lives. A woman who has felt abandoned, ignored, physically ill and of no particular use to herself or her family spends one last night with her elderly mother as she prepares to kill herself. Her mother tries every method from begging to logic to humor in order to to try to get her to change her mind.
The play, presented in real-time, is gripping. Norman is a powerful writer. She creates great, flawed characters and places them in a fishbowl for us to watch as they swim in circles around an issue no one really wants to talk about -- suicide. This play is sure to spark some great discussions, which is what powerful literature ought to do.