Cleaning Up Parenting Fallout

Scottish playwright Sharman MacDonald’s 1984 play “When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout . . .,” at the Odyssey, explores the fractious nature of the mother-daughter dynamic with humor and savage insight.

MacDonald’s recent feature film, “The Winter Guest,” co-written with Alan Rickman and starring the real-life mother-daughter team of Phyllida Law and Emma Thompson, ventures into much the same territory--but with a much chillier, more bleak sensibility.

The play, set largely on a Scottish beach in high summer, also deals with flawed love, mutual misunderstanding and ultimate forgiveness, but more playfully. In Lisa D. Katz’s lighting design, the prevalent Scottish gray is mitigated by shades of amber. Ron Sossi’s wonderful sound is a lively cacophony of gulls and surf, and Iynt Anmiller’s set provides versatile levels for the sure-footed, still youthful characters.

MacDonald eventually reveals the underlying peril of this deceptively halcyon setting: a massive nuclear power complex just down the beach, as good an operative metaphor as one can imagine for the aftereffects of poisonous parenting.

Not that Morag (Carol Kane) meant to be a bad mom. Under the prim exterior (hilariously evoked by Mona Thalheimer’s fussy costumes), she is a closet sensualist who defines her life by the man in it. If her husband hadn’t abandoned her, leaving her with little Fiona (Rachel Singer) to raise, Morag might not have made the mistakes she did. But whatever the extenuating factors, Fiona is still dealing with the fallout of her mother’s failure and her own rash youth.

Now, the grown Fiona has agreed to go on holiday with Morag and Fiona’s childhood friend Vari (Shannon Branham) at the seaside community where Fiona and Vari were raised. For Fiona, a brittle sophisticate who has abjured marriage and children, the locale brings painful recollections. As the action segues back and forth from Fiona’s childhood to the present day, we sift through the wreckage of Fiona and Morag’s past, piecing together the chain of events that have left Fiona so desperately alienated.

Although MacDonald keenly evokes female body-consciousness, her emphasis on bodily functions borders on the sophomoric. But the performances, under the assured guardianship of director Elina deSantos, are compelling, and the play sucker-punches you with emotion along the way. Branham’s comic portrayal turns richly poignant. Kane captures the dichotomy of the dour, vibrant, transcendently irritating Morag. And Singer charts the transitions between Fiona’s childhood and adult selves with subtle and heartbreaking precision.

BE THERE

“When I Was a Girl, I Used to Scream and Shout . . . ,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West L.A. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m., except March 7, 2 p.m. Ends March 28. $18.50-$22.50. (310) 477-2055. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.