Going Under

2011, 15 minutes

Going Under centers around Maureen, a housewife who married young and feels as though she is paying the price

Going Under centers around Maureen, a housewife who married young and feels as though she is paying the price. She is the mother of two boys, Jason and Alphonse who don’t get along as well as she might have hoped, and though she started off as the center of her husband Elliot’s world, her sons have taken her place. Her only time away from her home life is her swimming routine while the boys are at school; it’s her freedom, her “me time”. She is interrupted and forced to pick her sons up from school as Jason has instigated a fight. She returns home to find Elliot in bed with a co-worker, a shock to her, and she boils over. She throws his lover out of the house and trashes their bedroom while the boys play outside, and in the end the only thing she hears is that Elliot “never loved her”. On his way out, Elliot promises Jason and Alphonse a weekend of fun and Maureen is left to deal with the two boys who are covered in mud from their romp in the backyard. While she bathes them, her annoyance, anger, hurt and frustration cause her to snap as the boys roughhouse, splashing the bathroom and her with water. Without realizing what she is doing, only craving calm and silence, Maureen drowns her sons (we never see the act, only hear it). Two days later, she and Elliot continue to mourn the boys, and it seems as though their mutual grief has brought them back together before the police come and arrest Maureen, leaving Elliot with nothing.

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Companies involved in this production

• Kingston