By Peter Maddern
Image by Olivia Zanchetta
The often fraught and anachronistic relationship that can develop between Greek mothers and their sons has become in recent years a source of good humour but in Elena Carapetis’ first play The Good Son we see how it can also all become quite destructive.
Frank (Renato Musolino) is a 30 something single guy still living at home under the watchful eye of his mum, Meda (Eugenia Fragos). The play opens with his attempt at concealing from Meda his serious love interest Ana (Adriana Bonacurso) who has slept over. As the play develops this is Frank’s only con, but one that quickly comes to pale into insignificance relative to those attempted on him by those around whom he has hitherto trusted.
Added to the mix is Jimmy (Demitrios Sirilas), the kid next door the family has known since he was a boy who seems to be as welcome in Frank and Meda’s house as they are themselves. Gradually, it becomes apparent that Meda’s gambling habit has reached the end of the road, tearing at her maternal relationship with Frank and sucking in the others in ever more frightening and hopeless ways.
Image by Olivia Zanchetta
The Good Son is just a short play, running at around 70 minutes, but Carapetis brings a lot of themes and angst together in that time. While the subject matter becomes ever more complicated and tense, there are some wonderful quips that keep it all an enjoyable experience and with the collection of surnames involved one can sense there is much home grown history also brought to bear when playing with the underlying ethnic story.
Musolino delivers another excellent performance and Fragos is compelling as she mixes frailty with malevolence, desperation with manipulation – can one so slight really be also so hollow and how much burden can one good son really be asked to carry? The set, obtained from donated second-hand materials, seems a little out of date for 1980’s décor and I worried for the last 40 minutes about the iron left on but the performers’ universally strong showings steam roll these concerns and make this a delight.
Kryztoff Rating 3.5K
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