MRS LOWRY AND SON

As an artist, LS Lowry was almost totally defined by his propensity to make everyone look thin. Stick-like, even. But as a man, he was defi ned by his mother (although if Freud is to be believed, we all are).

‘I haven’t been happy since 1868,’ Mrs Lowry announces to her devoted son. Waspishly played by the glorious June Watson, the embittered widow took to her bed shortly after Lowry’s father’s death and refused to get up again until her own departure seven years later.

Martyn Hesford’s tightly woven script is genius, with every line a unit of gold – at a mere hour and a half with no interval, it’s a perfect template for fat-free theatre. The play takes place in Mrs Lowry’s bedroom, captured by her son in a 1939 painting entitled The Bedroom Pendlebury, a rather dour image of a sparse room containing little more than an iron-frame bed. Richard Kent’s ingenious set allows for more artistic licence and the chance to glimpse the overpowering chimneys and industrial landscape Lowry made his own.

Forced to move to Pendlebury from a smarter suburb of Manchester when her husband’s business failed, history relates that Lowry’s mother never really recovered from the disappointment and nor did she let anyone forget it. Her crass, callous snobbery and ruthless emotional exploitation of her only child’s devotion could have made for a deeply depressing evening, but while she doesn’t win any fans, the dialogue is scattered with comic gems.


Abbey Wright’s seamless direction cleverly places Michael Begley’s compelling Lowry on the edges of the picture in every scene; stooped, stoical, yet delivering just the right degree of internal rebellion. During this period of his life, Lowry would return from his work as a rent collector, attend to his mother’s extensive needs and then escape to his easel. No friends, no visitors, no life except the two of them. A relationship as bleak as many of his landscapes. ‘Had I not been lonely none of my works would have happened,’ he said.

So even though her monstrous, controlling personality was hardly a blueprint for perfect mothering, Mrs Lowry indirectly did the world a favour.

Until 23 November at Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, London WC2: 0844-871 7632, www.atgtickets.com