Tracy Ann Oberman's mother of a monster role - The Jewish Chronicle

Normally, when you’re offered a part as a mother, your heart sinks. You think, oh no, how boring.”

Tracy Ann Oberman is in a break from rehearsals of Mother of Him at the Park Theatre and, yes, she plays the eponymous mother. But in this case her fears were unfounded. She’s loving the role. “It’s really good. So good. It’s unusual to find a female character so well written — and written by a 25-year-old man.”

The man is Evan Placey, a Canadian Jewish writer who won awards when the play was first staged in 2010. “I think there are pressures we put on mothers that fathers don’t have to face. And, as a young writer, I haven’t seen many strong roles for women. I was interested in writing about a mother being challenged,” he told the JC at the time.

The play takes place over Chanucah, in the home where single mother Brenda lives with her two sons. Oberman is keen that I shouldn’t give away spoilers: “Brenda is a middle-class Jewish mother, whose son has done something terrible, and is under house arrest. She’s fighting a media battle with the journalists outside.” The ‘something terrible’ is based on real life, and the perpetrator son was based on people Placey knew from the Toronto Jewish community.

As Brenda and family are Jewish I ask Oberman about the recent “Jewface” row, when Jewish theatre professionals pointed out the importance of Jewish involvement in productions with Jewish characters and themes, warning of misinterpretations and cultural appropriation. She’s reluctant to comment — “It’s not a struggle that I’m involved with” — and says any trained actor should be able to play any part.

In this case, despite the characters’ ethnicity and the Chanucah candles, it is “not in the slightest a Jewish play, it’s irrelevant. It just happens to be about a Jewish family.” However, she feels that Jewish audience members will find extra nuances in the situation of a “nice Jewish boy” who has done something terrible. As Placey put it in his JC interview: “I think her Jewishness, however secular, is what she clings — or is forced to cling — on to, as everything else falls apart around her.”

To prepare for the role, Oberman has been reading accounts of mothers and sons, including the book written by Sue Klebold, mother of the notorious Columbine school shooter, Dylan.

“She’s a fascinating woman. She writes very forensically about how her world fell apart, how the boy she saw as quiet and sweet-natured became a killer.”

Does she identify with Brenda? “Absolutely not. I’m very different as a mother.” During rehearsals, she keeps thinking, “that’s not how I was brought up,” and when her mother helped her practise her lines, “the next day, she called and said, ‘Tracy, I can’t get that play out of my head! Why does that mother do what she does?”

Oberman’s own child is younger than the boys in the play, but she’s been thinking a lot about the way mothers relate to their children at all ages. “We only want what’s best for them.”

The play is set in 1998, so there’s no social media, giving more power to the journalists who besiege Brenda’s house. Placey was writing at the time of the disappearance of the toddler Madeleine McCann, and noticed how much coverage was centred on her mother Kate, and her demeanour and actions. We’re quick to judge a mother in the spotlight against our ideas of what mothers should be.

“Nowadays she could put up a Facebook post or use Twitter to get her voice heard,” says Oberman. But that’s not an option for Brenda.

It’s interesting that Oberman sees social media as potentially a good thing for Brenda, as she’s experienced the flip side — intense internet trolling after she spoke out about the abuse she saw online.

“It really exploded after I became vocal about the misogyny and antisemitism that I saw others being subjected to, particularly Luciana Berger,” she says. “Most of the trolls are from the far left.”

Keen to turn the experience to “something creative and positive” she set up her podcast Trolled in April.

Guests so far include Gary Lineker, Luciana Berger, Rachel Riley, Frances Barber, Al Murray and a host of others, all talking about the experience of being under attack on social media.

“It’s very funny, very witty. I’ve found it life-enhancing to make” On Sunday, she hosted an episode live at the London Podcast Festival, with Nick Cohen and Rachel Riley. “We had a really, really good time” .

The previous week she’d appeared on Lorraine Kelly’s ITV show to discuss trolling, detailing the kind of things that people say to her.

“To be told your family didn’t really die in the Holocaust, Auschwitz was made up, you’re disgusting, a Zionist, a prostitute… They go on and on and on.

“As women, often men will try and silence us, and intimidate us… But as strong women, we’re not going to go anywhere.” She’s delighted that now there are guidelines to help people know what to do if they are targeted by trolls online (see the back page of this week’s JC)

Dealing with abuse like this might have crushed another performer — or just drained them of energy. But not Oberman. As well as preparing for the opening of Mother of Him, she’s filming a new series of Friday Night Dinner, and writing for Radio Four. Plus there’s another series of Trolled coming soon. Next year, she’s hoping to get her female version of Shylock produced.

“And of course I’m a mother and a wife… so it’s busy, busy, busy.”

‘Mother of Him’ is at the Park Theatre, and opens on September 24.