Review: My Mother’s Funeral – The Show, Fringe 2024

My Mother’s Funeral: The Show made the audience laugh and cry, sometimes barely a minute apart. The first time there was audience laughter, it was so perfectly timed and integrated with the show that I thought I was sitting among theatrical plants.

This three-person show is at Summerhall’s Roundabout. That’s a circular (ish) and wonderfully steep bank of seats around a stage in the middle. The audience is up close with the actors, and the play unfolds in a whirl of motion around the centre, with actors going up and down the three aisles at their own pace.

I was taken aback at first. There’s an early scene, an early outburst of chaos and drama, as our main character is bombarded with demands, questions, and comments from others. Two others play these other characters, jumping like lightning, sparking along powerlines into these personas. 

The play often has moments like this to powerfully represent those times when the world’s demands get loud and insistent. The hospital is always on the phone, asking politely at first, wanting the body in their morgue to be claimed. 

Sometimes, My Mother’s Funeral: The Show is the opposite. It features high emotion and one–on–one scenes between grieving siblings or demanding bosses.

Tone

My Mother’s Funeral: The Show feels real. It may feature gay space termites but (and because of this, not despite) everything that happens is entirely believable. 

The premise is simple enough – to pay for her mother’s funeral, a playwright in the very infancy of her career and with a fickle, demanding commissioning director decides to write a play about the death of a mother.

In the audience, we know this is a trainwreck in the making. Can the playwright keep her emotional distance?

Wait, stay with me. If the phrase “emotional distance” is a red flag for arty-and-dull, then don’t worry—My Mother’s Funeral: The Show is not. It’s a play that packs punches, sowing emotional seeds that blossom only a few scenes later.

The guy next to me on the benches was about six feet three inches tall, bald and bearded. He looked like he benchpressed for fun in the back of his white van, and by the end of the performance, his eyes were red with tears.

What to expect

My Mother’s Funeral: The Show starts so swiftly that you might need a second or two to catch up and accept that the play has started.

From there, the tempo keeps up, and the days since Mum’s death whizz by, grind slowly by, and the world turns. 

Mum and daughter were great friends and so the loss is deeply felt. But there’s a brother in the opposite position, and the relationship between him and Mum seems almost hostile. At times, at the very best, he didn’t seem to care that she was dead.

Our hero, the playwright, is the devoted daughter who does not want her beloved mother to have a council funeral and has no money at all. She’s also just lost her play. Her fickle and commercially driven director (or producer—the boss figure who decides which shows get made) seems to have unexpectedly decided not to proceed with a commissioned play. No play means no money.

The result of all this is that, under the burden of grief, My Mother’s Funeral: The Show is about the pressure of getting a play commissioned and paid for on short notice.

Overall

Nicole Sawyer, Debra Baker and Samuel Armfield are brilliant in Kelly Jones’ play. 

These three talented performers bring life to the funeral with emotionally intense scenes. I can’t imagine My Mother’s Funeral: The Show working half as well without the strength of these actors.

I didn’t think My Mother’s Funeral: The Show would touch me like it did. It’s absolutely a modern play to see but perhaps not if you’re grieving.