Its lurid title notwithstanding, “I Killed My Mother” is neither campy comedy nor a theatrical take on film noir. Instead, Andras Visky’s new play — a portrait of a young woman’s hardscrabble odyssey growing up in a Romanian orphanage — relentlessly and effectively conveys her emotional anguish.
By the time this self-conscious poetic work concludes, you’ll feel as if you’ve been through hell and back yourself.
The Romanian playwright and poet wrote it especially for its lead actress, Melissa Lorraine Hawkins, the artistic director of Chicago’s Theatre Y, a company influenced by the theatrical traditions of Eastern Europe. It certainly gives her a flashy showcase as Bernadette, abandoned by her Gypsy mother at birth, as were so many infants under Ceausescu’s repressive regime.
Bereft and adrift, Bernadette flounders until she meets the equally young but more experienced Clip (Andrew Hampton Livingston). As they suffer one indignity and punishment after another — for speaking out of turn, metal clips are attached to their tongues — they become soulmates, promising to love the other “as long as I live and afterwards, too.”
Years later, Bernadette leaves the orphanage, imagining that Clip is there to guide her path. Eventually she tracks down her mother and confronts her with a rage born of years of deprivation.
Alternating between narration and dialogue, the actors perform at such a fever pitch from start to finish that the piece has nowhere to go. It’s no wonder they periodically lie down on the floor as if exhausted. The stylistic pretensions, which include folksy songs Livingston sings while accompanying himself on ukulele, are more irritating than enlightening.
Director Karin Coonrod has provided an atmospheric staging, which is performed on a bare set ringed by crumbling cobblestones. But despite the raw power of the subject matter and Hawkins’ intense performance, “I Killed My Mother” stubbornly keeps you at an emotional remove.