Helen is like when your culinarily challenged dad tries to make dinner. Follow the instructions on the side of the packet. Chuck it in the microwave and hope for the best. Maureen Lennon’s two-hander play is a well-intentioned exploration of how grief drives a wedge between a mother and daughter. But its execution lacks enough flare for it to have its own unique flavour. Instead we get a ready-made melodrama boiled in the bag.
We meet Helen and her daughter Becca at the moment of the former’s husband and the latter’s father’s death. Stilted dialogue, consistent throughout, means it’s immediately frosty to the touch, and bare bones emotions without any details to clothe them seem to take it below freezing. Becca grows up, goes to university, meets and marries “Dave” so quickly that just as you process it, she is already pregnant. Realism without the real; too much is skipped out for anything to feel genuine.
The themes eventually mesh onto one leaving an awkward aftertaste. Suicide attempts to alcoholism, divorce and post-natal depression. It feels vacuous, placed by the numbers to whip up some dramatic whirlwinds. Without sensitive exploration it’s uncomfortable.
The performers didn’t quite know what to make of it either, although they ought to be applauded for trying to find something to grasp. Jo Mousley and Chloe Wade as Helen and Becca valiantly garner nuggets of warmth. We never question the dynamics of their relationship, but the writing opens a window to let the heat out. Scenes fluctuate between shouting matches or soppy generously open declarations of love. There is no middle ground. Everything spills out.
The set also works against them. For some reason it recalls a display in the Design Museum: bare walls with a solitary gap where a row of household objects are placed neatly on shelves. They are lit from behind and proffer themselves to be contemplated with a bloodless academic gaze. A plate, a box, a pot, all isolated from their everyday existence. The icy aesthetic jars with the writing and director Tom Bellerby’s desired realism but crucially it stunts the performers from blossoming by anchoring Helen to the corner.
One cannot help but wonder if a realistic set would have done the performers a favour. It would have given them something to work with, a chair or a table to forge a power dynamic with. Instead they are left out in the cold with the rest of Helen.
With a refreshed focus on the core of the play, a mother and daughter overcoming loss, this could have potential. But in its current iteration there are so many other generically written issues layered over each other that its heart is buried too deep to see the light.
Helen plays at Theatre503 until 27 May
Photo Credit: Danny Kaan
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