Veronica and Joan
The central axis of the play is the relationship between Veronica and Joan, which is so terribly and irrevocably transformed by what happened to Joan when she auditioned alone for the American agent. We can only surmise what went on in Mississippi, the room upstairs where she went to sing for Luther St John, or about the awful stress between Joan and Veronica that must have followed that day, culminating in Joan’s leaving for America at a very young age. The rupture between mother and daughter was so severe that over the next twenty years Joan never replied to the more than one hundred letters that Veronica wrote to her, nor ever returned to see her mother, until her arrival in the final act of the play.

It is clear from several facts that we learn during the play, that Veronica was tortured all of her life by her part in what happened to Joan, and the loss of any relationship with her daughter, for example. As we noted in the podcast, Jillian reveals that Veronica was prone to excessive drinking. As Veronica lies dying, she is desperate to make some final apology or reconciliation with her daughter. She has asked Jillian to petition Joan to come to see her, and there is a piercing moment when out of nowhere we hear Veronica call out pitifully for Joan from upstairs. Jillian also tells Joan that in a fit of remorse and self-loathing Veronica told her the truth about what happened all those years ago. She said “I am not a mother. I am a thing with no soul. If Joan has a soul it’s no thanks to me. I deserve no pity. I deserve no pardon. For I am a monster. And death is my only hope.” The sins of the mother do seem to have been visited upon her daughter, because from what we see of Joan, sadly it appears that her soul has been damaged by her mother’s betrayal.

As Sean and I discussed in our conversation, the doubling of the casting of Laura Donnelly as both Veronica and Joan in the stage production, highlights this fateful lineage. There are a number of indications that even from the beginning Veronica and her eldest daughter were closely bound, partly perhaps because they were alike. Jillian volunteers in fact that Veronica said that Joan was most like her, and more than one of the daughters suggest that Joan was Veronica’s favourite. She was clearly attractive, with a bold, even rebellious spirit. She stole cigarettes from the local shop and dared to smoke in the house against her mother’s strict rule. She was probably the most talented of the girls, but also prone to be distracted by worldly things, such as boys. One can imagine, I think, that Veronica too was not shy with men, given her history with the girl’s vanishing father, or fathers.

And finally, of course, like her mother, Joan ends up as a single mother. There is an epigraph printed in the front of the published text of the play which quotes a few lines from a song by Joni Mitchell called Little Green, which recounts the real-life story of the singer having a baby as a young woman after she had left home and giving it up for adoption: 
Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending home
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed
Little Green, have a happy ending.

Joan wishes her ‘little green’ a happy ending.