Day 106: The Artist Man and Mother Woman, by Morna Pearson

It's always a little bit awkward to watch a grown man submit to an overprotective mother. It's never expressly stated but I get the impression the "Artist Man" might be very easily played as rather autistic, though it seems to stem more from the dysfunctional relationship at home, where at forty-something he still lives with just his aging mother. His father is dead and this is only mentioned briefly and skated over in a scene that could be played in so many different ways. When he ventures out to the shops alone for apparently the first time in his life, and advertises for a date, she does everything she can to stop it - including murder, though this it once again only strongly implied rather than exactly stated. I was left with the strong impression that perhaps he doesn't really know about his differences, that maybe he has been so sheltered that stretched to not telling him of a diagnosis (though his interactions with the few people he meets at the shop and through his dating ad make it painfully obvious that he doesn't have much in the way of social skills, dispite being an apparently successful art teacher)

This play is written "in dialect" and while I've struggled with this before, I am starting to get the hang of particularly the scottish terms - I think partly being in a weekly drama class with mostly-accented classmates has helped to attune my ear. I didn't find I was slowed down nearly as much by it this time, and was drawn into the story with a deep sympathy for the vulnerable and smothered Geoffrey.