Theatre Review: I'll Tell You This For Nothing, Assembly George Square, Edinburgh

Subtitled “My Mother the War Hero”, I’ll Tell You This for Nothing is a sweetly-crafted memory play in which actor Kate JasonSmith pays tribute to her own mother Phyllis’s life, in particular her service as a nurse during the Second World War.
Kate JasonSmith's show pays tribute to her mother.Kate JasonSmith's show pays tribute to her mother.
Kate JasonSmith's show pays tribute to her mother.

I'll Tell You This For Nothing, Assembly George Square, Edinburgh ***

Subtitled “My Mother the War Hero”, I’ll Tell You This for Nothing is a sweetly-crafted memory play in which actor Kate JasonSmith pays tribute to her own mother Phyllis’s life, in particular her service as a nurse during the Second World War.

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Given that we learn her mother lived until she was in her 90s, it feels as though JasonSmith has shown us only a fragmentary window upon a life well-lived, and there is the sense that the character she’s created here – in collaboration with dramaturg Deb Filler and director Jan Bolwell – isn’t quite given the space to grow from her breadth of experience.

Yet JasonSmith, who is from Wellington, New Zealand, is a brisk and lively solo storyteller, and her facility for accents helps her paint a picture of those times through its characters, particularly when she inhabits her wide-eyed young Irish mother and the much older woman reminiscing with the young Kate.

The story flits between horror and hope; between the dry humour of frontline life in Belgium and the vileness of a posting to Belsen; between romance with Kate’s officer father – a Catholic – and the bigotry of Phyllis’ protestant mother.

It’s a warm portrait, not only of JasonSmith’s mother, who earned the Legion d’Honneur, but to all the women of her generation.

Until 25 August

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