Review: Mother May We — No one will know the violence it took to become this gentle
Ree welcomes her audience into the emotional space of her performance, allowing you to first share her pain and safely explore those feelings in yourself, then share her journey to healing.
Credit: DefinitelyDefne Photography, @definitelydefne101
Mother May We is Fleabag for women of colour. It’s a one woman show where poet Mel Ree does all the characters, most important of which is a woman monologuing her messy life as she tries to find love for herself. But unlike Fleabag, there is no distance. Mel Ree isn’t about to tell you that she made up a character and wax ironic, there is no curiosity about your own self-destruction.
This is all a bit unfair to Fleabag, but I feel Mother May We works as a response to the disassociating woman, My Year of Rest and Relaxation era that’s infiltrated popular culture. To be clear, I am very sure that Mel Ree has watched the Zeitgeist tapes. She follows and is followed by @newtown.affirmations — this is a woman who clearly knows young women throw around words like ‘trauma dump’, ‘trauma bond’, and joke about how mentally unstable they are.
And to paraphrase Mina Le quoting Aurora Muir in grain of salt mag, there is something incredibly white about indulgently wallowing in your own sadness and self-destruction.
Mel Ree does something much more radical and much more necessary. She recognises that young women of colour going about living in this world, in this country, whether they are Black, Indigenous, children of migrants, have already experienced so much pain and don’t need to be told about that again. They are smart enough to use words like intergenerational trauma and send friends ironic memes about their relationship with their mum, but that’s not the same as healing.
Mother May We, quite gently, says: you’ve felt that pain and held onto it for long enough, you need to find a way to move on. This is what I found most astounding about Mel Ree’s show, it portrays healing rather than just trauma porn, and I think that speaks deeply to Ree’s care for her audience and what will actually help them.
Mother May We is deeply emotional, intense, intimate, funny, and cathartic. And there is an incredible sense of care and sincerity with which Ree welcomes her audience into the emotional space of her performance, allowing you to e first share her pain and safely explore those feelings in yourself, then share her journey to healing. It is a familiar story to many, but the second part is usually absent.
There’s an incredible specificity to this work: there are memories of child abuse unique to the monologuing persona, elements specific to Pasifika culture and experiences, diasporic experiences, queer elements, and loving shoutouts to Sydney Trains and the social geography of Sydney. Mother May We doesn’t aim for universality, not every part of this performance is for everyone, and people can connect to the same part in different ways. While it is not for everyone, there are so many people who will know what Mel Ree means by this work.
It’s only made better by its presentation and space. SBW Stables has small seating and the stage reaches the benches, lowkey and intimate, perfect for a one-woman poetic. Set in Ree’s ‘bedroom’, costume and scene changes feel like your friend is treating you to an elaborate show to help you visualise your deep chat. At the same time, you feel like you are in her memories or mindscape, as one vivid scene is replaced by another through a combination of great sound design, amazing projector usage and Ree changing in and out of her wall of costumes.
It’s high energy and funny because it's joyful and loving. You’ll laugh, you’ll probably cry (I know I did), and you will leave feeling like you went on a journey. I definitely recommend seeing it.
Mother May We runs until October 8