‘night, Mother is Marsha Norman’s fifth produced play and was composed in 1981 before premiering in 1983. That same year would see Norman honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for a work often considered one of the darkest stories to ever earn that distinctive achievement. This chamber drama is a showcase for two actresses of varying age ranges as they play out a tempestuous conflict marked by secrets and revelations between a mother and her daughter who sees no way out of hopelessness except through the taking of her own life.
The story moves inexorably and uncontrollably in its real time encasement marked by the presence of a ticking clock on the set toward the still-shocking and unsettling thunderclap of a gunshot going off behind the door locked by the daughter. Few plays in the history of all the theater can be said to be as relentless in its portrait of a depressive personality as ‘night, Mother.
The original Broadway cast featured Kathy Bates as the daughter, Jessie. Produced four years before Bates would take home an Oscar for Misery, the film version released in 1986 featured Anne Bancroft playing mother to Sissy Spacek’s Jessie. In addition to the Pulitzer, Marsha Norman was also honored with the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize the year ‘night, Mother premiered.
