'Night Mother. | 
 enlarge | Author: Marsha Norman
Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service
Category: Book
List Price: $7.50
Buy New: $5.80
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 33381
Media: Paperback
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.1 x 0.2
ISBN: 0822208210
Dewey Decimal Number: 812
EAN: 9780822208211
ASIN: 0822208210
Publication Date: January 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
'night, Mother is a taut and fluid drama that addresses different emotions and special relations. By one of America's most talented playwrights, this play won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious Hull-Warriner Award, four Tony nominations, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983.
'night, Mother had its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in December 1982. It opened on Broadway in March 1983, directed by Tom Moore and starring Anne Pitoniak and Kathy Bates; a film, starring Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek, was released in 1986.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
'Day, Mother December 12, 2008
My mother called. She is an actress in the national theater in Izmir, Turkey. This is her last year before retirement after 40 years of service. The theater had asked her what play she would like to play. She told them to surprise her. She got `Night Mother by Marsha Norman in the role of Mama. She seemed excited on the phone and I was very happy for her. I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a copy of the English version. We both read the play and started a discussion. I completely agree with her that this is one of the finest plays ever written.
This play takes place in a few hours of a forty-something Jessie and her mother, whom we know as `Mama'. Jessie has had a rough life: a long time epileptic, which has subsided for the past year thanks to better medication; a troubled son, who keeps stealing from her; a divorce; her father had ended his life, but not before writing a simple good-by message: Gone Fishing; and a mother who has emotionally been distant--if not physically--yet demanding of her to take care of the house they were sharing.
Jessie had had enough and she was now declaring, right off the bat as the play starts, her nonchalant determination to die with her father's gun. The dialogue is Jessie's way to make it `easier' on her mother for what is about to happen. Needless to say the mother goes through an emotional roller coaster ride. At times the play is funny, and other times tragic.
Be yourself, I said to my mother. Funny how her last role would resemble so much of herself. I am, thankfully, a bit luckier than Jessie that I still can find enjoyment in life.
A few weeks later my mother and I talked again. She apparently had given up on the play because it was raising her blood pressure. I told her she made a good decision.
There are seven hours in time difference between here and there. Difference of day and night.
I'm tired, I'm hurt, I'm sad, I feel used. October 7, 2008
`Night Mother, a 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning play deserves just that! This one act play with simply two characters was unlike something I have read. The play draws on emotional dialogue, an unpleasant subject of suicide and the challenge to convince one not to do it. What is prize winning about the dramatic story is the realistic conversational tones and often painful sounds. It is the exchange of normal everyday dialogue, intermixed with riveting rationalization, pleading, bargaining, and coming to terms with life as it shall be. For the theatrical onstage drama, a clock is visible to the audience that indicates the action takes place in one evening and with no intermission. Time is of the essence.
The drama takes place in the early 80's in a small home, and one main character is Jessie, a 40ish woman with epilepsy, was deserted by her husband, and her son is a teenage criminal whose whereabouts are unknown. The only other character is her mother, whom Jessie lives with and Jessie, somewhat, does caregiving.
In the midst of Jessie carefully and strategically planning her suicide, she is nonchalantly taking care of last minute obligations for her mother, like doing mother's nails. Included in the planning, is a list of instructions so mother can locate everything needed after Jessie's suicide takes place. As mother tries to reason and rationalize and beg, Jessie conducts herself normally, making the preparations and letting nothing interfere. Here, we learn about Jessie, her dead father, why she was deserted, her son, and much more. Then the author transfers the dialogue with brilliancy..... This is wonderful, sad, emotional and powerful.
Movie version with superb acting!
See the movie version with Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft. It is rare that I see a version that equals the book! This is powerful. 'night, Mother.
Another wonderful play about death and dying is by Michael
Cristofer, a Pulitzer Prize Shadow Box: A Drama in Two Acts and the film version directed by Paul Newman The Shadow Box. It examines the 5stages of grieving one goes through as they are dying. These stages are also displayed by the living members, the loved ones. Rizzo
Gaining an Insight on a Difficult Topic May 15, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed this play. I watched the film awhile back, and since I wanted to change choose different films for my Film Appreciation class, I decided to review the play before adding 'Night, Mother to my list. What a powerful play. It sheds light on a very difficult subject. Jesse, the main character, makes the decision to "get off the bus early" after careful thought. She shows that some people contemplate this critical experience probably more carefully than buying a house or a car. Her decision is hardly spontaneous or emotional, nothing that I imagined at all. The power of the read helped me to decide to buy the video later on. I also ended up buying a collection of Marsha Norman's other plays, hoping that I will duplicate the insight gained by reading this play.
A devastating portrait of a mother and daughter October 15, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
"'night, Mother" is a tour de force conversation between a mother, Thelma, and her daughter, Jessie, who has just told her that she is going to commit suicide at the end of the night. The play is a taut high-wire act that leaves you spellbound as Thelma tries to convince her daughter not to go through with it and Jessie sternly insists. Thelma and Jessie are extremely dimensional, deep characters with an achingly believable relationship. Through the course of their conversation it becomes apparent that there is a yawning chasm between them despite their seeming closeness, and while Thelma thinks that the two can put it right Jessie doesn't believe it -- or want to try. The fierce, emotional back-and-forth between Mother and daughter keeps you on the edge of your seat. The dialogue is very natural and believable, and the playwright, Marsha Norman, displays an extraordinary acuity for what her characters are feeling and have gone through to reach this point. Norman has crafted a devastating portrait of two women that leaves an enormous impact on the reader. I only finished it two hours ago, but I seriously doubt that "night, Mother" will be leaving my thoughts any time soon. Highly recommended -- but keep the Kleenex on hand, just in case.
One of the Most Fearsome Plays of the Past Thirty Years October 10, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Marsha Norman's 1983 Pulitizer Prize-winning 'NIGHT, MOTHER is frequently described as a play "about suicide." Although the play does indeed deal with suicide, this is actually a shallow designation; it is about a lot of things, but most particularly control: who has it, who wants it, and the extent a person will go to obtain it.
The play involves two characters: Thelma, an elderly woman, and Jessie, her middle-aged daughter. They have lived together in an isolated house on a rural road for a number of years. Thelma describes herself as "a plain country woman;" she enjoys life in a fundamental way, not expecting more than she already knows, watching television, knitting, nibbling at sweets, and enjoying regular visits from her son and his family. Jessie, who suffers from epilepsy and is divorced, has become something of a recluse, and her life consists largely of managing her mother's home and thinking on the past. One evening, as the play begins, Jessie informs Thelma that she has decided to kill herself right after she gives Thelma her weekly manicure.
Thelma does not take Jessie seriously at first; clearly there have been too many scenes between the two for Jessie's statement to have any real meaning for her. But Jessie is serious indeed, and over the course of an hour and a half the play evolves into a battle of wits, Jessie determined to kill herself, Thelma equally determined to prevent her from it. In the process, we learn quite a bit about the family and their lives and the various emotional and factual secrets the women have hidden from each other over the years.
The play is brilliantly constructed, performed in "real time" without any scene changes or intermission; the characters--and the equally vivid people they discuss but whom we never see--are equally well rendered. There are moments are laughter, even more moments of insight, but the play is progressively intense, progressively dark, with all the power of a noose that slowly tightens around your neck. One of the most fearsome bits of theatre of the past thirty years or so, easily the equal of such legendary works as Albee's WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Recommended.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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