Customer Reviews

'night, Mother: A Play (Mermaid Dramabook)

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Night, Mother is a sharp, terse play that examines the issue of hopelessness in all areas and facets of life. What is hopelessness, and how does it come about? This play looks at one aspect of suicide and its eventual cause: the loss of one's self, one's identity. The dialogues between Mother and Jessie are intense, but yet there is a separateness, a barrier that can not be broken between the two. They are united together by their relation, but it ends there. The mother/daughter relationship in this play is quite believeable -- albeit sad and unfortunate. Night, Mother is a dark, chilling play that leaves a pondering imprint on your mind long after the last page has been read.

"'night, Mother" is a tour de force conversation between a mother, Thelma, and her daughter, Jessie, who has just told her that she is going to commit suicide at the end of the night. The play is a taut high-wire act that leaves you spellbound as Thelma tries to convince her daughter not to go through with it and Jessie sternly insists. Thelma and Jessie are extremely dimensional, deep characters with an achingly believable relationship. Through the course of their conversation it becomes apparent that there is a yawning chasm between them despite their seeming closeness, and while Thelma thinks that the two can put it right Jessie doesn't believe it -- or want to try. The fierce, emotional back-and-forth between Mother and daughter keeps you on the edge of your seat. The dialogue is very natural and believable, and the playwright, Marsha Norman, displays an extraordinary acuity for what her characters are feeling and have gone through to reach this point. Norman has crafted a devastating portrait of two women that leaves an enormous impact on the reader. I only finished it two hours ago, but I seriously doubt that "night, Mother" will be leaving my thoughts any time soon. Highly recommended -- but keep the Kleenex on hand, just in case.

Marsha Norman's 1983 Pulitizer Prize-winning 'NIGHT, MOTHER is frequently described as a play "about suicide." Although the play does indeed deal with suicide, this is actually a shallow designation; it is about a lot of things, but most particularly control: who has it, who wants it, and the extent a person will go to obtain it.

The play involves two characters: Thelma, an elderly woman, and Jessie, her middle-aged daughter. They have lived together in an isolated house on a rural road for a number of years. Thelma describes herself as "a plain country woman;" she enjoys life in a fundamental way, not expecting more than she already knows, watching television, knitting, nibbling at sweets, and enjoying regular visits from her son and his family. Jessie, who suffers from epilepsy and is divorced, has become something of a recluse, and her life consists largely of managing her mother's home and thinking on the past. One evening, as the play begins, Jessie informs Thelma that she has decided to kill herself right after she gives Thelma her weekly manicure.

Thelma does not take Jessie seriously at first; clearly there have been too many scenes between the two for Jessie's statement to have any real meaning for her. But Jessie is serious indeed, and over the course of an hour and a half the play evolves into a battle of wits, Jessie determined to kill herself, Thelma equally determined to prevent her from it. In the process, we learn quite a bit about the family and their lives and the various emotional and factual secrets the women have hidden from each other over the years.

The play is brilliantly constructed, performed in "real time" without any scene changes or intermission; the characters--and the equally vivid people they discuss but whom we never see--are equally well rendered. There are moments are laughter, even more moments of insight, but the play is progressively intense, progressively dark, with all the power of a noose that slowly tightens around your neck. One of the most fearsome bits of theatre of the past thirty years or so, easily the equal of such legendary works as Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

What if your daughter or son came into the living room, and she or he told you that he or she was going to end her or his life? How would you respond? What would you do? And the question is what can you do?

Mama thinks that her and her daughter are having a normal night at the house until she finds out that her daughter has planned to end her life. At first, Thelma "Mama" thinks that Jessie is kidding when she says that she wants to shoot herself. When Thelma realizes that Jessie is serious, the conflict begins between the struggle of life and death which is out of Thelma's hands.

Thelma stalls and tries to find out why Jessie wants to end her life. In the small amount of time between life and death, Thelma finds out more about her daughter than she ever did in her entire time with while she releases secrets and concerns that she never revealed to her daughter.

'Night Mother is a play that unwinds spellbound confessions and displays intense emotions that run through the course of people lives. Jessie and Thelma are powerful characters that makes me feel like I am there with them in the room. Jessie, in the first time in her life, feels like she has a sense of control, and death is freeing her as she sees life imprisoning her. The whole play is intriguing and complex. The ending will make you feel like you have realized that life is complex and question why you exist as a human being.

Michael Russo

This play only has two characters, has one main plot, one setting, and is one conversation. One might think that this play, just by knowing these facts, must not be good becaue how can a writer capture an audeince's attention for 90 pages of one conversation, especially when the conversation is about suicide. Do not ask how, but Marshall Norman does it. He lets us into the world of Jessie and Thelma, and the reader is hooked on every last word.
When Jesse reveals to Thelma that she is going to commit suicide, Thelma does not beleive her. However, once Jessie begins to list her reasons, Thelma goes from disbeleif to realism in a heartbeat. The tone then changes from a mother having a night chat with her daughter to a mother trying to save her daughter's life.
Her mother ives her many reasons why she should not kiil herself, which are all reasons that Jesse shoots down. The reader can hear the panick in the mother's voice and the calmness of Jesse's without anyone acting it out or doing the dialogue.
The writing itself is poetic and beautiful. He is using death to show the beauty of life, which is amazing. The mother does such a god job at giving her daughter reasons to live that someone contiplating suicide might reconsider.
While I am not going to ive away the ending, I will just say that the author does a good job of slowing down the pace for the grand finale. The endign is not forced and the play does not end too soon or too late, it's just right. The small home is also the perfect setting for this remarkable play because the reader can really feel involved in the lives of these two people in a setting that they are similar to.
I have to give this play five stars. I read it in less than an hour because the pace of it is fast and smooth. The setting is great and the characters are so realistic they jump off the page and into your kitchen. If you want to know more about the meaning of life, I highly recommend this book.

My mother called. She is an actress in the national theater in Izmir, Turkey. This is her last year before retirement after 40 years of service. The theater had asked her what play she would like to play. She told them to surprise her. She got `Night Mother by Marsha Norman in the role of Mama. She seemed excited on the phone and I was very happy for her. I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of the English version. We both read the play and started a discussion. I completely agree with her that this is one of the finest plays ever written.

This play takes place in a few hours of a forty-something Jessie and her mother, whom we know as `Mama'. Jessie has had a rough life: a long time epileptic, which has subsided for the past year thanks to better medication; a troubled son, who keeps stealing from her; a divorce; her father had ended his life, but not before writing a simple good-by message: Gone Fishing; and a mother who has emotionally been distant--if not physically--yet demanding of her to take care of the house they were sharing.

Jessie had had enough and she was now declaring, right off the bat as the play starts, her nonchalant determination to die with her father's gun. The dialogue is Jessie's way to make it `easier' on her mother for what is about to happen. Needless to say the mother goes through an emotional roller coaster ride. At times the play is funny, and other times tragic.

Be yourself, I said to my mother. Funny how her last role would resemble so much of herself. I am, thankfully, a bit luckier than Jessie that I still can find enjoyment in life.

A few weeks later my mother and I talked again. She apparently had given up on the play because it was raising her blood pressure. I told her she made a good decision.

There are seven hours in time difference between here and there. Difference of day and night.

Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother (Hill and Wang, 1983)

What a refreshing piece of work-- a sparse, clear-headed play that examines the ramifications of suicide and (for once) comes up with the right answer. The action takes place in two rooms, with two people, and runs about an hour and a half. The two characters, a late-thirties daughter and her mother, start with the idea that the daughter is planning on committing suicide later that night, and the resulting tension between them allows both an examination of the more stable, understandable reasons behind the desie to end one's life and the soul-baring necessary in any familial relationship (and present in only a few).****

This is an amazingly moving drama. The way in which Mother and Jessie interact is so true to the nature of most relationships of comfort. Things are understood, tho never said. And yet these 2 people still don't really know each other. The nuances of this play are what make it so touching. The end always leaves me deeply moved, and not sure exactly what I should feel.

This is one of my favorite plays of all time. it's a great discussion on the issue of suicide. There's one line Ive always remebered: When the daughter is trying to justify the idea that she wants to off herslef, and she uses an illustration of someone riding the bus and riding the bus, and they could just stay on and ride it around the block another round, but why bother. It's really well written, and how the mother and dauther get along is interesting.

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.