Eastgate Arts Centre, Peebles, and touring 2006

Gillian Lees in 'Good Reason'.

GOOD REASON starts and ends with ‘Mosaic’, a poem by Anthony Minghella. Written in 1990, it’s a collage of clues pieced together by a woman waking up to the adultery of her father and her lover. Suddenly she sees a pattern in the men’s mysterious phone calls, unaccounted absences and changes of behaviour.

Inspired by this poem, Tim Nunn and Elspeth Murray have written a play that explores the relationship between a mother and daughter, one wearily accustomed to her husband’s habitual infidelity, the other newly traumatised by the realisation of her husband’s deceit. But although it’s an emotionally loaded subject, ‘Good Reason’ seems only to dissipate the intensity of Minghella’s poem and spread it over an hour of soap-opera banality.

Perhaps I should declare a gender bias here. It’s said that when faced with a dilemma, men try to find a practical solution where women take a more discursive approach. One responds with cold reasoning, the other with emotional exploration. Perhaps, being all discursive, ‘Good Reason’ is just too female for me.

Is it because I’m male that I spent most of the play willing the two women to stop moping and get to grips with the problem? Would a female critic have been more responsive to the play’s examination of their every uncertainty, insecurity and repressed emotion? Can only women appreciate the portrayal of the gulf in communication that forces mothers and daughters apart?

Or are my suspicions right and would any theatregoer tire of a play with so little dramatic momentum? Minghella’s poem establishes from the start that both women are being cheated on – it takes a long hour for the younger woman to get the older to admit it. Everything else is talking round the subject.

Katherine Morley’s production has a punchiness that stops the play from being a mere wallow in sentiment. As Annie, the daughter, Gillian Lees combines the iron determination of an independent career woman with the vulnerability of the betrayed. Her body language is all nervous ticks – stroking her leg, tapping her foot – as she represses her rage and keeps the lid on her frustration at her mother’s Teflon composure.

As the mother, Linda Duncan McLaughlin balances a breezy exterior against the despair provoked by a life of subservience and denial. Behind the brave face, she’s as tough in her own way as her more outspoken daughter.

Their forceful performances help ‘Good Reason’ succeed as a character study, but as a play it’s too reflective to make compelling drama.

Good Reason is a co-production with Birnam Arts, and can be seen on tour at Lyth Arts Centre, 2 May; Timespan, Helmsdale, 3 May; Village Hall, Plockton, 4 May; Talla Nan Ros, Kingussie, 5 May; Corran Halls, Oban, 6 May; Woodend Barn, Banchory, 11 May; Tullnessie & Forbes Village Hall, 12 May 2006.

© Mark Fisher, 2006

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