Tom Scott’s Ma & Da Season: Joan and The Daylight Atheist

Why this play, and why now? It’s the question in every funding application and at every first production meeting that, whether literally asked or not, must be considered, and one for which I often struggle to find an answer when Auckland Theatre Company releases their annual programme. Presented in repertoire as the Ma & Da season, Joan (2018) and The Daylight Atheist (2002) are anecdotal narratives reflecting on the lives of writer and political satirist Tom Scott’s mother and father respectively. As Danny Moffat and the titular Joan regale us with their stories, actors Michael Hurst, and Ginette McDonald and Kate McGill evoke the fiery Irish temperaments of the immigrant protagonists as they navigate their new lives in New Zealand.

The problem, however, with presenting Scott’s scripts now, is that when considering them through either a masculine or feminine lens in the current climate, the effect of any ‘woke’ presentism is incompatible with the nostalgia on which the plays rely to resonate. [More]

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That Tom Scott has a more conflicted and complicated relationship with his father than his mother is obvious in the two stories he tells about his Da and Ma in the plays The Daylight Atheist and Joan, now playing in repertoire courtesy of Auckland Theatre Company.

The Daylight Atheist, starring Michael Hurst and described by fellow reviewer Paul Simei-Barton as an extended monologue, is poignant comedy shot through with equal parts wit and tragedy. It paints a complex picture of an intelligent but flawed man unable – for whatever reasons – to find the humanity within his troubled heart.

In contrast, Joan feels like more of tribute to a feisty and funny Ma who might not have told her children daily that she loved them but, by her actions, held a fractured family together in times tougher than many of us can imagine. In doing so, she repeatedly proved she loved her kids – and kept loving them even when she recognised their faults and failings. [More]

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Many people put their life story into print, but few go the extra step that well-known cartoonist Tom Scott has done by turning the story into a play, not only once, but twice now.

His first was the semi-autobiographical play The Daylight Atheist about his alcoholic father, and now, he has very cleverly put his mother’s story onto the stage in Joan, currently playing at Circa Theatre.

However, this is no solo performance portraying a chronological list of Scott’s mother’s life events, but an originally constructed piece of theatre that is engaging and insightful. [More] 

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Nearly sixteen years after Tom Scott’s highly successful play The Daylight Athiest, inspired by his father, opened – premiered by the Auckland Theatre Company then self-produced by Scott to ensure it got a Wellington production (see my reviews below) – we are treated to Circa Theatre’s premiere of his new play about his mother: Joan. Comparisons are inevitable.

Before I go into those, it must be acknowledged that Joan earned laughs aplenty and got a standing ovation on opening night from a warmly supportive audience. It is a life-story amusingly told on the page by Scott and entertainingly animated by Ginette McDonald as the wryly acerbic older Joan and Kate McGill (her daughter) as the younger Joan, directed by Tim Gordon.

Back to the comparisons. Scott’s father, Tom Snr, was renamed Danny Moffatt in The Daylight Athiest while Joan and her family retain their real names in Joan; hence Big Tom and Little Tom or Tommy. Little Tom’s hurtful nickname, ‘Egghead’, is common to both plays. Danny’s wife is called ‘Dingbat’ in The Daylight Athiest but Joan doesn’t acknowledge that in Joan.

More importantly the pain and pathos engendered by Danny’s emotionally abusive non-relationship with ‘Egghead’ gives the comedy in The Daylight Athiest a sharp edge and confrontational energy that resolves, as I concluded in my first review, in a sense that we have participated in the playwright’s life-changing act of forgiveness. But while Scott’s subtitle for Joan is ‘A play about a wonderful mum by an ungrateful son’, that ingratitude is not apparent in the story so a similar sense of catharsis (the playwright forgiving himself?) is not achieved. In fact he depicts himself and his family as conscientiously doing their bit to see their mum is cared for in advancing years, despite her escalating attempts to engender guilt in them.

The universal children-to-mother question, “Do you love us?” is a recurring theme, however, which foments laugh-inducing responses from Joan and – on opening night, anyway – leads to a subtle and insightful resolution. As we witness Joan’s inner pleasure at knowing she’s loved, it’s up to us to decide who is redeemed in that moment.

The set, by Tolis Papazoglou, wedged into a trapezoid space flanked by three banks of seating, features a plain grey coffin upon which a bottle of Irish whiskey and two poured glasses wait. Three long white unravelled shrouds form a backdrop across which various projected images (designed by Charley Draper) drift. Upstage two clear plastic chairs face the coffin; a vase of flowers on an ornate plinth and a coat stand featuring a cloth cap complete the setting. This could be the viewing room in a funeral parlour but nothing is said or done to confirm that.

Dancing in to Tommy Dorsey’s big band rendition of ‘Blue Skies’, McDonald’s Old Joan warms us up with a gag about the Pope and Frank Sinatra. She soon reveals that she is already in the coffin but, being pumped full of formaldehyde, insists, “This is not who I am!” She has relocated to the retirement home (in which she has yet to die), and is reading her diary and complaining about her cold extremities, when her younger adult self (McGill) arrives. And she is delighted to see her: “My memory has not been playing tricks on me!” When Young Joan wants to know, “What happened to you?” Old Joan decides not to spoil it for her, she’ll find out soon enough.

Now I should explain I went a second time (to the Sunday matinee) to clarify this dramaturgical set up because I thought I must have missed a crucial clue as to where exactly Old Joan and Young Joan are standing in relating to the story, each other and us, the audience. We are addressed directly much of the time. But I remain confused. A programme note suggests it is a “journey of discovery” whereby young Joan discovers her future self, but this is not how it is set up or plays out. The ‘quest for her true self’ premise seems weak, given it’s just her embalmed body that she declares “is not who I am!”

If Young Joan had arrived before Old Joan returned to life in the Home, I’d have thought they were reunited in limbo, waiting for her soul to depart her temporal body or – being Catholic – in purgatory, seeking the soul-cleansing that will allow her entry to heaven or wherever the hell she thinks her destination might be. Would this, then, have made us the judgement panel they have to answer to? 

As it stands, I feel Young Joan is especially short-changed by the lack of a clear purpose for her presence in Old Joan’s post-mortem consciousness (and conscience?). They simply manifest ‘before and after motherhood’ images and share the storytelling load, amiably. The lack of conflict between Joan’s two selves, let alone in their having to confront her mortality and afterlife destiny, robs both play and production of a dynamic driver for the unfolding storytelling. I was going to say unfolding action but mostly it is exposition, albeit wittily-wrought, about the past, punctuated with interactions that include the odd flashback to allow for welcome ‘present action’. And the lack of ‘a place to stand’ renders the staging uninspired.

Being the acerbic one, Old Joan gets most of the punchlines and Ginette McDonald delivers them with consummate skill. I read or heard in an interview (the publicity has been extensive) she knew the real Joan quite well and doing impressions of her was one of her party pieces, so the role was written for her and she appears to slip into it with an ease we probably take for granted.

Kate McGill is equally relaxed in manifesting the relatively innocent and optimistic Young Joan. “Pack your bags Missy,” Old Joan exhorts her. “You’re going on a guilt trip.” Unmarried and pregnant with twins, to a handsome airman, she sets her off on a journey from maternal damnation and paternal understanding in Southern Ireland via Limerick and Wales to a sister in England, where she gives birth to Little Tom and his sister Sue. Her brothers have to track down pilot Tom to make an honest woman of Joan before he takes to the skies again. Then it’s on to New Zealand by boat where they are reunited with Big Tom.

The family’s changing fortunes in housing – always important to a mother with an ever-increasing brood – leads to the loneliness of living in rural Feilding. Their remoteness is exacerbated by news from ‘home’ of parental deaths, first of Joan’s father then of Big Tom’s mother. The different ways they react show – or rather tell – us that their feelings run deep despite the defence mechanisms they employ. A bicycle represents the liberation Joan experiences when she gets a job and coin to call her own.

The first half comes to a head with the Joans united in demonstrating her participation in an anti-Springbok Tour protest in Palmerston North, climaxing in their chanting “Shame! Shame!” Could this, combined with the “guilt trip” line, be a clue to her central quest: to overcome shame? Could the dramatic conflict-generating theme be shame v pride: both potent concepts in a Catholic mind? Might resolving this get her out of purgatory?

In the second half, with Joan “no longer a spring chicken”, McGill is relegated to playing bit-parts – Joan’s children as adults, mostly: roles too functionally written to allow for enriching characterisation, despite the elegant Sheila Horton-designed costumes. The directorial attempts to manifest these siblings stylishly falls flat because, despite the judicious lighting by a hard-working Marcus McShane on the desk, significant sections of the audience can only hear rather than see them. The drifting projections on the back-cloths also do little to engage us in Joan’s story beyond an objective understanding.

Her vexed relationships with her married children and better relationships with her grandchildren, as she sees out her final years, brings Joan’s story to its inevitable end. While it’s clear the raw material is there with which to create a strong play, I can’t say I am drawn in by empathy or moved, as I was with The Daylight Atheist.  

In fairness I should add that, both times I saw it, others reported they found it powerful or moving. On the other hand there wre those who could not comprehend how Joan’s children could possibly love such a vile mother, therefore they found the copious audience laughter unsettling. I have no such misgivings: it’s an Irish humour thing, I feel; a coping mechanism for dealing with vulnerability, disappointment and existential despair – and it worked a treat in The Daylight Atheist.

Towards the end of this play (as Scott has revealed in interviews) Old Joan tells us how she railed at her multi award-winning son Tom for being so successful: “For the sake of your brothers and sisters,” she wails, “couldn’t you just fail for once in your life?” I won’t go so far as to say she’s got her wish at last but Joan does have the potential to be a much better play and production than it is now.  

As the reviews below mention, The Daylight Atheist was thoroughly workshopped by the Auckland Theatre Company before it went public. The Auckland and Wellington productions were very differently staged yet delivered the same emotional power. And after the Wellington production had toured extensively, it was tightened and trimmed by ten minutes, for the better. Since then it has been reproduced throughout New Zealand and overseas.

I believe Joan could benefit hugely from good dramaturgical attention.
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[NBR/Arts – 10 May, 2002]

The Daylight Atheist
by Tom Scott, directed by Danny Mulheron
at The Soundings Theatre, Te Papa, Wellington 

Reviewed by John Smythe 

We leave Tom Scott’s The Daylight Atheist in a rolling haze of heart/head responses. This Danny Mulheron-directed production, with Grant Tilly superb as Danny Moffat, plays like rolling thunder with flashes of forked lightening. So soon after it, Scott’s skill is hard to quantify. “He gets three one-liners into one line,” my companion offers. Behind us, executives from United Networks, the sponsors (they backed the current Auckland production too) marvel at how it can be staged and performed so differently yet deliver the same emotional power.

Having seen only the Wellington production, I cannot imagine anyone but Grant Tilly in the solo role of the razor-tongued expatriate Irish drunk and sad clown incarnate, so it is reassuring to have Mulheron’s conviction confirmed, that this is a new Kiwi classic. It will continue to find life in many incarnations and maturing actors and directors will aspire to meeting its challenge. I’m reminded of Australian playwright Jack Hibberd’s modern classic, A Stretch of the Imagination (reviewed NBR 21/09/2001). While Stretch may be more theatrically inventive, with more actually happening in present action, The Daylight Atheist probes deeper to more cathartic effect.

Legend has it that cartoonist, comedy writer and TV dramatist Tom Scott was prodded to expand into live theatre by Roger Hall. In 1999, speaking at Sir Edmund Hillary’s 80^th birthday, Tom characterised ruralNew Zealand life in the 1950s and early 1960s as “stupefyingly dull … [where] life didn’t just pass you by, it crossed to the other side of the road when it saw you coming.” In a reaction that speaks volumes about where comedy comes from, Roger challenged Tom: “If you don’t write a play about your childhood, I will.”

From an early age Tom’s strategy for coping with large family life at the effect of an alcoholic, cruel and largely absent father – who was nevertheless admired and beloved by his drinking mates – included turning the confusion, pain and distress of it all into entertaining stories for the amusement of friends and neighbours. It is one of the many ironies that surround and infuse the play that Tom’s gift for pungent wit is directly inherited from that same father.

And so The Daylight Atheist evolved, through many drafts and a comprehensive script development process with Auckland Theatre Company’s 2econd Unit, from its personally therapeutic seed into a largely fictional work, still rooted in emotional truth. I’m told the first draft included all the family. Now Tom isolates Danny in a purgatory of his own making, where he is obliged to account for himself while his wife and children interact with boisterous energy in the cramped but spirited quarters beyond his reach.

Dan Hannah’s cluttered yet bleak and leaking twin bedroom box set, encased in water-stained primrose wallpaper, becomes a mocking macrocosm of the “Royal crying bowl” Danny calls for whenever the son he calls Egghead cracks. It is here that Grant Tilly’s Danny Moffat returns after closing time, via external access, to live in a booze-blunted state of overwhelm, sardonic, savage and finally sad. His gift of the gab is simultaneously winning, funny, compelling, insightful and shocking in its heartlessness.

Feeling disenfranchised from the age of eight, after being torn from his large family fold to live with a lonely widowed aunt, Danny’s war-time escape into the airforce and a cushy posting to Winnipeg fails to rebuild his self-esteem. Back inIreland, an unplanned pregnancy from a brief encounter with a fecund Ballybunion lass seals his fate as a put-upon father and provider, forever obliged to a fast-growing and inevitably demanding family.

Seeking a new beginning in New Zealand, a sepia photo that deludes him the expectant wife he left behind is a Sophia Loren look-alike. But his eager and unexpected arrival in the berthed ship’s cabin, only to find a temporarily toothless wife (doomed to the nickname, “Dingbat”) and literally shit-scared son (“Egghead”), shatters all their romantic illusions.

Danny’s denial of his dependants’ needs and his escape into pubs from Marton to Wanganui only deepens his loathing of them and himself, and widens the chasm between them. This is the final irony. He robs himself of the very family life he was denied as a child. Although they’re only a wall away, he is as remote from them as his Aunt’s house was from his mother.

Yet his classic Irish/Maori mateship with a fellow freezing worker, Jack, proves he is capable of a kind of love.

In a narrative that never flags, the ship-board reunion, the school swimming sports and the surreal account Danny gives Jack, on his deathbed, of Egghead’s soccer match against a team of Lake Alice mental patients, stand out as gems, multi-faceted, mesmerising in what they reveal and hide, and profoundly dark at their centre.

Ever the entertaining raconteur, Tom Scott spins and weaves this life-spanning yarn with sure-handed skill, drawing its disparate threads into a magical whole. The present-tense immediacy of his richly textured writing allows us to simultaneously share Danny’s experiences, evaluate his self-destructive behaviour and gain brief glimpses into how it is for his wife, son and the rest of the family. While it may well be improved by giving Danny more to do in his now-time space, having him marooned with only his thoughts and memories for company is entirely valid.

The creative team’s alignment on giving this production an everyday feel allows the humour and pathos to take us by surprise. In the aftermath I am not alone in feeling touched by the play’s inherent compassion; by a sense we’ve participated in a life-changing act of forgiveness.

[NBR/Arts – 17 April, 2003]

The Daylight Atheist
by Tom Scott, directed by Danny Mulheron
Downstage, Wellington
Until 3 May

Reviewed by John Smythe

You know you are in the presence of something special when a compulsively funny play also compels compassion for a wasted life and the lives it has wounded on the way; when simultaneously you want to tell this grotesque man to grow up and stop his self-defeating bullshit, you rise to your feet to applaud a consummate performance of epic scale, and you feel privileged to have witnessed a profound act of forgiveness and love.

Since it opened at the Te Papa Soundings Theatre nearly a year ago (reviewed NBR 10 May 2002), this Danny Mulheron-directed version of Tom Scott’s The Daylight Atheist designed by Dan Hennah with Grant Tilly as Danny Moffat has gone on to play Hastings, Palmerston North and Nelson. That and a recent period of re-rehearsal have seen the play grow in stature by rooting itself deeper in the compost it feeds off. And it is about ten minutes shorter, proving the adage that less is more.

This Danny Moffat, less determined now to win us over with his acerbic wit, is more clearly a bewildered eight year old boy trapped in the body of a middle aged drunk. Condemned by his own limitations to lonely isolation in his cluttered, disintegrating and externally-accessed room, he is also trapped in the treadmill of his recurring memories, bitterness, self-justifications and pain. Meanwhile, in their rented home in a remote Marton of the late 1960s, his wife and children get on with their lives.

In present time Danny does little else but survive, drinking beer, boiling the jug, placing containers to catch leaks as he entertains himself (and us) with a cruel humour that proves to be a purgatory rather than a purgative. Finally, as he eats the tray-delivered meal of a man condemned to repeat the cycles of denial that will take him nowhere yet again, it is pure fear that is consuming him. He may be a daylight atheist but when darkness falls, he believes in God like you wouldn’t believe.

Part of me wants him to at least have some futile project or other on the go that gives his life some semblance of purpose and the play some sense of present action. Even Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot is driven by the verb to wait. Yet, while Moffat only just manages the verb to be, his existential stasis is undeniably entertaining. We are drawn in by his witty gift of the gab and held by a deepening recognition of others and ourselves in the all-too-human nature of his fear-frozen state.

Dan Hennah’s hyper-naturalistic set, drawn from Tom Scott’s sketch of his father’s room, adds a lot of information about Moffat’s past and present life and reinforces its inescapable credibility. Director Danny Mulheron has proved his value as a director of new homegrown work by ensuring the maturing of this classic play.

The confidence, depth and subtlety Grant Tilly now brings to his Danny Moffat confirms his standing as one of New Zealand’s leading actors.

It was also a desire to welcome Tilly back to Downstage after a 30 year absence (occasioned, ironically, by a Moffat-like stand-off) that brought us to our feet on opening night. His last role there was Touchstone in As You Like It, the company’s first production in the Hannah Playhouse.

Downstage’s Hannah Playhouse has now re-opened with a brand new lift and refurbished toilets. If only Danny Moffat could move on and upgrade himself too. 

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