Mommie and the Minister

There’s nothing subtle about Mommie and the Minister. From drag queens, through incest and child abuse, to melodramatic spurts of fake blood, this is a gothic pantomime with all the darkness of a psychological thriller and the political correctness of an episode of Brass Eye.

This Sisters Grimm cult smash hit tells the story of a brother and sister: Edmund and Harriet have been imprisoned in a basement for twenty years by their Cruella DeVil lookalike "mommie," who passes her days entertaining a mysterious minister. Fed on nothing but newspaper mush, these adult-children attempt to uncover the dark truth about "mommie and the minister" before it’s too late.

The cast of three, with the help of some flashing lights and haunting sound effects, maintain the tension with gutsy, energetic performances that never waver. Particularly alarming is the larger than life, mascara drenched Mommie, who looms menacingly over the stage as she taunts her children. Thanks to the flimsy plot which leaves a few loose threads hanging—who after all is the minister?—and the handful of especially crude attempts to shock, cries of “suck my cock” being one, the melodrama however manages to be more disturbing than comic.

The phrase "in poor taste" springs to mind when describing a show that points a satirical finger at issues of child abduction and abuse, but this, it seems, is the point. This production deliberately laughs in the face of taboo in a bid to both shock and entertain and the result is a surprisingly unsettling, but not necessarily funny, theatrical experience.