From the play 'Confustions' - notes of 'Mother figure'.

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NOTES OF ‘MOTHER FIGURE’ by Alan Ayckbourn

From the play’Confustions’

LUCY

Facts:

  • Has three children under school age
  • Her husband is a travelling salesman and works away from home for long periods of time.  
  • In the second play ‘Drinking Companions; we meet Harry, trying and failing to talk to Lucy on the phone, staying in a hotel on his travels.  In this play he us revealed as a hard drinking, womaniser.
  • No longer responds to either telephone bells or door bells; she knows the phone is likely to be Harry “Anything he has to say to me, he can say to my face or not at all.”
  • Does not recognise her next door neighbour = little contact with outside world, even that which is close to her.
  • Cannot remember the last time she actually got dressed.

IMPORTANT POINTS TO CONSIDER:

  • She is very hard on Terry and sympathetic to Rosemary because:

 Rosemary reminds her of herself, in the way her husband treats her

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Harry expresses opinions about the roles of men and women in a way which we later (in ‘Drinking Companions’) learn reflects Harry’s views too:  “I think I quite envy your husband, sometimes.  Getting about a bit. . .  it’s more natural.  For a man.  His natural way of life. . . Woman stays in the cave, man the hunter goes off roving at will.  Mind you, I think the idea originally was he went off hunting for food.  Difference sort of game these days, eh? . . Be after something quite different these days eh?”

  • Lucy’s original reaction to ...

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