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Three generations of the Randall family: Sally (Pippa Pearthree),
Rose (Lynn Redgrave), and Kate (Angela Goethals)
Photo by T. Charles Erickson
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After writing and performing in Shakespeare
for My Father, I thought "this is such a good feeling, I must
write some more! And I must write another play because plays are the thing
I feel most at home with." Perhaps it was a natural thing, too, after
having written a play about my father, that I should think about
my mother.
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There are aspects of my mother's life that fill her with what I call
"if onlys." "If only I had . . .," "If only I had
done . . .," etc. She's not at all a self-pitying person. She's a
very wonderful, strong, extraordinary woman. But as you live longer and
longer there's that sense of regret. I see it in her. I've often thought
about regret and wondered what, if anything, we might do to rid ourselves
of it. How can we take responsibility for whatever it is we do with our
lives and say, "Well, for better or worse, I did this. And I live
with the consequences." |
Rachel Kempson, Lynn's Mother (1940s)
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| At the same time, I had been since childhood haunted by a particular
poem of John Donne, the one that starts "Go and catch a falling
star." I was probably around ten years old. I thought the words were
sublime,
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot . . .
The idea of the mandrake was also familiar to me, even as
a child, because I knew Romeo and Juliet. Juliet talked about her
fear of hearing screams like the mandrake scream in the tomb when she woke
up. I looked more into the mandrake and found what an extraordinary and
potent plant it is, how full of sexuality, how it's mentioned in the
Bible. Then I began weaving in the idea of the impossible tasks John Donne
sets up at the beginning of the poem, "Go and catch a falling
star/Get with child a mandrake root." What if they were possible? And
what if the character Rose used the mandrake to be part of her sexual
self, that as she grew older, this became the thing that haunted her and
drove her mad?
So, all that sort of came together and off I set! -- Lynn
Redgrave, January 2001.
Lynn Redgrave (Rose) and Francesca Smith (Child Sally)
Photo by T. Charles Erickson
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