The Mother
BY FLORIAN ZELLER
TRANSLATED BY CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON
DIRECTED BY TRIP CULLMAN
LINDA GROSS THEATER
FEBRUARY 20 – APRIL 13, 2019
Starring Academy Award nominee Isabelle Huppert (Elle), The Mother is a captivating and disquieting new play about a woman grasping for stability by acclaimed French writer Florian Zeller (The Father), translated by Christopher Hampton (Atonement) that will leave you questioning the very nature of reality.
More Info
Can one love one’s son too much? Anne has given everything to the family she’s built. Now the years have gone by, and her children have grown up and have lives and loves of their own, leaving her alone in a world that is crumbling around her.
Cast & Creative
Reviews
“Isabelle Huppert is compulsively watchable. She fills the ever-expanding stage in a hallucinogenic blaze of activity. Her approach is openly volatile & viscerally wrenching. She’ll take you scary places you didn’t know existed.”
Ben Brantley, The New York Times
“A searing & mesmerizing performance by Ms. Huppert. Throwing herself into a full-bodied physical performance, she holds nothing back.”
MARILYN STASIO, Variety
“Riveting! Cullman puts on a real spectacle. We experience what it is to have our mind completely unravel.”
Robert Hofler, THE WRAP
“From maniacally funny to drunkenly depressed, Isabelle Huppert stuns & shocks in The Mother. It’s damn near impossible to take your eyes off the legendary French actress!”
Kerensa Cadenas, Entertainment Weekly
“The unstable, paranoid rehashing of scenes is thrilling! Huppert is brilliant & wickedly funny.”
Rollo Romig, The New Yorker
“Dark & disquieting! A tour de force performance, physically & emotionally challenging for Huppert, an Academy Award nominee, who is riveting as a woman losing her mind.”
Barbara Schuler, Newsday
“You can’t take your eyes off such a uniquely fascinating stage creature, in a performance that can be described, without hyperbole, as fearless. Huppert’s dismantling is visceral & cruel, and by the end, she sends chills down the spine.”
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter
“In a transfixing performance, Huppert gives Anne strength, resolve, wiliness & weakness. Her masterful interpretation of Zeller’s text is tough, vulnerable, trapped & still fighting.”
Tim Teeman, Daily Beast
Production Photos
Rehearsal Photos
Photos by Ahron R. Foster.
Community
study guide
Atlantic’s study guides take educators and their students deeper into the story. Each guide provides a variety of discussion starters, activities, and a relevant contextual basis to immerse students in the world of the play before attending the show.