Do you hate your mother? Hate? Like really hate? Is Mother’s Day a source of constant pain and distresses as you are torn between the demands of social niceties and your primaeval emotion?

You’re not alone. A theatre programmer in regional Victoria feels just the same way, believe it or not, and has an exquisite torture arranged:

Melbournians, cancel that lunch. Fire up the car. There’s still time to get to the Capital Theatre at Bendigo. Just read the blurb:

Tired of always giving flowers and chocolates to your Mum on Mother’s Day? Looking for something you can enjoy together? Then bring her along to see Michael Leunig — Australian cartoonist, writer, painter, philosopher and poet at The Capital this Mother’s Day at 3 pm.

Michael’s commentary on political, cultural and emotional life spans more than forty years and has often explored the idea of an innocent and sacred personal world. The fragile ecosystem of human nature and its relationship to the wider natural world is a related and recurrent theme…

He describes his approach as regressive, humorous, messy, mystical, primal and vaudevillian — producing work which is open to many interpretations and has been widely adapted in education, music, theatre, psychotherapy and spiritual life.

A few hours of mawkish, whinging, self-pitying, pseudo-Christian Socialist dross from a tired old hippie who has had nothing new to say in 40 years dressed up as profundity. He may even have a comment to make about Jews.

Inflict that on your mother and see how things go.

Illustration: leunig.com.au

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