Mama's girl explores the ties that bind
Mamakin

Checked your b belly button lately? Sure, the umbilical cord is gone, in the physical sense. But our mothers aren’t so easily detached. They’ve made a lasting impression on all of us, by presence or absence, cruelty or kindness. In fact, the nicer they are, the harder it is to grow up.

Getting over the life hazard of a functional (as opposed to dysfunctional) family is more or less the problem posed in Stephanie Moore’s funny and touching one-woman-plus-backup show, Mamakin, playing at Centaur Theatre this weekend.

It begins with a striking image: Moore in flesh-coloured tights, curled in the fetal position. Birth is imminent, and when it occurs the cord, an endless piece of oversized vacuum tubing, remains in place. “Be careful with that,” intones a maternal voice from behind a giant, totem-like mother mask. “I think we’ll just leave that on for a while”.

Much of Moore’s cute baby shtick has been done before. But perhaps never so well. She’s a bubbly, charismatic, blue-eyed blonde, reminiscent of Goldie Hawn in her Laugh-In days. Her eloquent body talk and improve-comedy skills are impressive.

Samantha is a young career woman who hates her job and dates all the wrong men. (Shades of the Cathy comic strip.) She rails against her mother’s critical feedback. But she can’t stop herself from listening to the omnipresent voice in the back of her head. She even carries her mother’s picture in her back pocket – “and if I follow the lines in her face, I can always find my way home.”

Aw, isn’t that sweet? Mamakin is as whimsical as a (naughty) piece of children’s theatre. Adult topics, like safe sex, are dealt with in a naive way. Musician-actor Derek Carkner takes breaks from the keyboard to play all of Samantha’s boyfriends and male acquaintances.

The audience is brought into the act too as Moore works the crowd, hopping into laps like a puppy.

But there is more to Mamakin, directed by Michael Kennard (Mump of the Toronto clown duo Mump and Smoot), than sugar and spice.

It’s really a slick, edgy piece of performance art that belongs to the Generation-X crowd – and, of course, their parents. Neither should miss it.

Pat Donnelly
THE MONTREAL GAZETTE