Ten years after Apron Strings and Nightlight premiered at Bats in the 1999 Fringe Festival under the collective title Mother Love, Mary Coffey has added a third short play, Umbilical, to make a trilogy of her insightful, compassionate and, in one case, darkly comic exploration of mother-child relationships.

A child’s bedroom – or a bed centre stage – is the starting point for each play. And the mother’s role as the giver of life is offset, in different ways, by death. Fathers are never mentioned, by the way, and neither are siblings or any other relations. Each play simply distils the essence of a very specific primal relationship.

In this Backyard Theatre season at Gryphon, Umbilical plays first, directed by Simon Boyes. With her characteristic clarity and sensitivity, Coffey brings a light yet penetrating touch to the dual perspectives of a Mother and her autistic daughter Rosie. Raquel Sims and Bethany Miller, respectively, bring exceptional emotional intelligence to their roles.

A cord connects them but Rosie is determined to see past her mother, and after a stress-inducing sequence – "I’m hungry!" / "You’ve just been fed", repeated ad infinitum – the slight hint the cord could be used for something else sets up a strong but subtle dramatic tension.

An ancient fairy tale makes the link between ‘changeling child’ folklore and the Mother’s present feeling that Rosie is not the child she was expecting. As she struggles to cope with practical and moral conundrums that have no answers, Rosie’s very different way of seeing her world is beautifully articulated, physically and verbally, as further incidents are played out.

The twist at the end raises many more questions than it answers, giving us plenty to ponder in the first of two intervals.

Apron Strings, directed by Coffey, brings a comic tone to its poignant tale of 45 year-old Timothy (Simon Boyes) and his vain attempt to liberate himself from the smothering of his Mother (Felicity Cozens). Catholic guilt is almost visible as a third player.

From the moment he ignores the alarm and keeps on sleeping we know he’s being a naughty boy. The clearly delineated performances honour Coffey’s crafty revealing of what has recently occurred and, more importantly, how it happened. Any questions of emotional credibility that may arise are neatly answered as new revelations emerge.

This time the twist in the tale reinforces the adage that the more you resist something, the more it persists.

Nightlight, also directed by Coffey, was the first of the three to be written, inspired by the question of how a mother copes with the death of an adult daughter on her OE, after an upbringing steeped in warnings to "Stay on the footpath. Go straight to school and come straight home. No detours. Don’t talk to strangers and never, never, never get into a car with someone you don’t know."

From the moment this Mother (Deanne Graham) comes into her daughter’s bedroom, we are aware of a profound sadness. Through her memories and imaginings, we gradually understand why. And as with Umbilical, we empathise with both Mother and daughter.

Melanie (Gabrielle Stewart) is recalled as a young woman ripe to burst into the wider world. Her departure for India, to seek out its spiritual wonders, is tarnished somewhat by her Catholic mother’s insistence she wears a St Christopher medallion for protection.

Again the actors inhabit their roles with a sensitive understanding, although Graham’s soft voice is a little too introspective for live theatre. Their dual miming of the same actions in slightly different spaces is rather awkward and I’m not sure it makes sense if it is all generated in the Mother’s mind.

A staging device I won’t be too specific about is a little bit clunky but it does produce a dramatic effect that just manages to claim its worth by transcending the technicalities. It’s worth noting that Mary Coffey’s later writing is so assured it has no need of such embellishments.

Technical issues aside, I feel the Nightlight and Apron Strings should play as the first half, then Umbilical after just one interval. That said, Backyard Theatre is to be commended for bringing Coffey’s trilogy to life: she is clearly playwright we need to nurture.

Mother Love reflects and explores profound experiences all humans can relate to, simply by virtue of having a mother, let alone a child.
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