A “difficult” woman waits for her two adult daughters to arrive at her deathbed. Meanwhile, all three of them – through dream-like visions of an alternate reality, through memories, through conversations both real and imagined – try to grapple with her impending end. This means confronting the deepest secrets of their hearts – around anger, sexuality, their own mortality – while trying to find some closure within their most complicated relationship. But does any woman really find resolution with her mother?

Cast size: 4F/1M

Originally directed by Wajdi Mouawad at Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui, this darkly powerful expression of the mother-daughter relationship in extremis was published by Playwrights Canada Press as part of Louise Forsyth's landmark collection of work by Quebec women, Anthology of Québec Women's Plays in English Translation (Volume Three).

"We are spellbound by this story, it goes straight to the heart, and we don't come out unscathed..."
Catherine Perrin, C’est bien meilleur le matin, Radio-Canada

"... Depicts that mysterious, subterranean force which often governs mother-daughter relationships in the same way it depicts death: unsparingly. »
Anne-Marie Cloutier, La Presse

"Louise Bombardier delivers an audacious, extreme, stirring play."
J.P. Angers, Métro

"It's a demanding play, a raw play, a violent play, but one that looks its subject straight in the eyes."
André Ducharme, Desautels, Radio-Canada

More information about Louise Bombardier

In the hospital room. The DAUGHTER is stretched out on her sofa. Then a blinding vision: the MOTHER appears, reduced to a head, a monster screaming with rage as she floats above her deathbed…

MOTHER: …The ogress has a taste for children, avenging the childhood she never had. A monster, I’m a monster, I’d love to go for a bike ride with friends my own age. I'm not crazy, just isolated and too young to die and that's what makes me complain so bitterly, I want Santa's sack full of love and I want it before Christmas. I'm an abortion, here's what an abortion is like: it's a child's bad drawing, but alive, rolled up in a ball at the bottom of the toilet bowl, so for God’s sake stop trying to clean me up, just pull the chain and flush!