Woman holding a a black chicken. They both look towards the camera.Mama is at home with a bedrid­den Papa, tick­ing through life with con­stant rounds of wash­ing, garden­ing, and meal mak­ing. Her fam­ily doesn’t vis­it as often as she’d like so she spends a lot of time in her garden.  When a cheeky chick­en starts scratch­ing around Mama is quite upset. The chick­en gradu­ally wins her over and Mama tells it all her secrets.

Gor­etti Chad­wick is excel­lent as Mama. At the start she bustles around the car­toon bright set (pro­duc­tion design­er John Park­er) fid­dling with the plants and threat­en­ing aph­ids. The two raised gar­dens and small clothes line give us a false sense of bright­ness and enclose Mama in domest­ic life. The chick­en (cre­ated by Helen Fuller) is gor­geous. Pup­peted by Haanz Fa’avae-Jackson it is delight­fully bird-like and provides a non-judge­ment­al listen­er for Mama to talk to. As Mama talks to the chick­en about cur­rent and past events we start to under­stand why the chil­dren and grand­chil­dren might not be not be vis­it­ing.  Play­wright Dav­id Fa’auliuli Mamea includes some shock­ing rev­el­a­tions about vari­ous rela­tion­ships and dir­ect­or Fas­itua Amosa keeps the ten­sion high in the final sec­tion. This is where Chad­wick really shines and we see through Mama’s facade.

A sweet show with depth.

Still Life with Chick­ens on at Circa Theatre to 2 June 2018