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Smaller
This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows
Play Closes 3 June 2006
Lyric Theatre Shaftesbury Avenue, London
Smaller is written by Carmel Morgan and is directed by Kathy Burke and stars Dawn French and Alison Moyet along with June Watson.
Bernice Clulow is the life and soul of the staff-room with a legendary reputation for her selfless devotion to her disabled mother, Maureen. But when she goes home to her mum her smile becomes fixed - her mum wants to talk and demands news from the outside world - Bernice just wants to kick her shoes off... and her mum's head in. Bernice's sister, Cath, left home as soon as she could to pursue a dream career in musical theatre, and missed out on all those precious mother-daughter moments. Now she belts out karaoke classics to hen parties in Puerto Banus... and she wonders, as she returns home, just what has happened to her once promising musical theatre career.
House-bound, honour-bound and homeward-bound - Maureen, Bernice and Cath pick their way through a minefield of guilt, resentment... and fear.
For television Carmel Morgan has written over 70 episodes for Cornation Street and Brookside. Her new tv series Supermodel, starring Cheryl Taylor, for BBC3 is due start filming in early 2006.
Please Note: This production contains very strong language. Age limit is 16 and over.
"Carmel Morgan's Smaller is a powerful play" The Daily Telegraph
"In this little-room-for-manoeuvre space the rivalries, resentment and remorse are pretty predictable. But Morgan has not wasted her apprenticeship in the wittiest of TV soaps (Corrie); there are small jolts of shrewdness and humour in almost every line. They are delivered by a terrific trio of actors, and director Kathy Burke makes each moment tell." The Observer
"This has the makings of a long-running West End comedy" The Daily Express
"In some ways, this new West End play starring Dawn French and the pop singer Alison Moyet is no great shakes. In some ways, that's the point. As its title indicates, Carmel Morgan's chamber piece about two sisters and their arthritically crippled mum is about the tragicomic trivialities of our daily lives and wasted years... The closing scenes are also seriously angry and grief-stricken. Moyet proves she can act after all, and French goes into a new gear impressively too. Come the close, then, this is actually a remarkably winning and touching piece of popular entertainment." The Independent on Sunday
"Kathy Burke's adroit production" The Guardian
"In theory, Smaller brings together a West End wishlist: Dawn French as the carer daughter of a disabled mother, Alison Moyet as the daughter left to 'shag and yodel her way across four continents', and Kathy Burke directing... Though Dawn French is a comedy goddess... it is not until the second act that it looks as if things might pick up and Smaller might get better - but it's only for a moment, and too late. Throughout, Moyet belts out songs she has written specially. I wish she didn't." The Sunday Telegraph
"I've nothing against Carmel Morgan's play Smaller except it being in a West End theatre. Any theatre. It's a half-hour sitcom thinly stretched out as a two-hour play, full of flat, cutesy writing and plodding jokes... The ending is of the laugh-through-tears, bone-crunchingly sentimental variety." The Sunday Times
The director Kathy Burke on Smaller: "Dawn French asked if I could recommend a good female writer to her. She asked me if I knew of any good writers working in television, because I think she originally wanted a TV project written. I didn't know Carmel but I knew her work, because I'm a big Coronation Street fan and I'd noticed over the years that, whenever I really loved an episode of Corrie, it tended to be written by Carmel Morgan, so I recommended her to Dawn. She and Dawn met and chatted. Carmel said she'd got a story which could be adjusted to work for two sisters. Once they'd decided to do it as a theatre piece, that's when they asked if I would be willing to direct it."
The playwright Carman Morgan on her play Smaller: "For a while I'd wanted to write a play about a disabled mother and a carer-daughter and that closed environment. I got a message asking me to go and have a chat with Dawn French. Dawn said she'd like to do a play with Alison did I have any ideas? I thought about it for a few weeks and talked it through with Dawn. We agreed that the set-up of two siblings and a disabled mum - one sister supposedly doing her bit and the other supposedly not - was more fertile and complex territory than the straight mother/daughter idea."
