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"She sucks his blood to stay alive," is how another character describes Helena's relationship with her son, a phrase that beautifully conjures Rigg's performance. The actress evokes a madness -- part cat, part vampire -- that operates at the animal level. Rigg underplays Helena, brandishing a mix of physical technique and emotionally distanced line readings that underscores her character's cold-blooded calculations. She shakes Helena from her disguise as a regal, self-possessed woman and reveals her as a monster, hunched over like a manic gargoyle. Rigg's co-star, David McCallum (who played Ilya Kuryakin in the '60s TV series "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."), described "Mother Love" as "four of the most terrifying hours of television I had ever watched." Ironically, Rigg's comeback as a maternal nightmare came after spending a decade primarily raising her own daughter, now 21. "If, at the end of 25 years," she told People, "it was said that I didn't fulfill my potential as a mother and a wife, I would be heartbroken. But if they said, 'She hasn't developed as an actress as much as she might,' I know the reasons why. And that as far as I'm concerned is good enough." Still, the hiatus wasn't entirely her choice. Although she toured with "Colette" in 1982 and starred in the London production of "Sondheim's Follies" in 1987, she told the New York Times' Benedict Nightingale that by the early 1990s, she feared for her career. "I put my hand up and said adsum [present], and nobody wanted to know." In many ways, her life echoes those of her RSC cohorts -- Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave and Maggie Smith. Each made similar jumps, entering the theater world as sterling ingenues, falling out of sight as their first bloom faded and reemerging as cultural icons in late middle age. None of these women, however, have reclaimed their tiaras by forging the bizarre path that Rigg has taken. Indeed, by choosing "Mother Love," Rigg seemed to respond with a vengeance to her new status as a mature woman. She may have been right to turn down typical older-women roles that are essentially window dressing. "I'm not a character actress yet," she told People in 1986. "If I'm clever about what parts I play, I'll stay a leading lady for 15 years. Then I'll switch to character roles." But given the absence of parts that explore the complexities of ordinary middle-aged and older women's lives, what's left is harridans, shrews and monsters. (Parts like Jane Tennison in "Prime Suspect" don't come along often, and Mirren got that one.) Rigg has used this unenviable situation to her advantage. She's repeatedly jumped at chances to play mothers and older women who are scary, mean, obsessive -- too awful to disappear into the background. The role of Mrs. Danvers, the creepy housekeeper and surrogate mother in "Rebecca," won her an Emmy. With the demented Lady Dedlock in Dickens' "Bleak House" for the BBC, she gave elegant dimension to an obscure character. In case anyone wasn't paying attention to her TV work, Rigg took her new identity as a viper onto the stage -- first by actually sharing the stage with a viper. In the early 1990s, she teamed up with director Jonathan Kent, artistic director of London's Almeida Theatre, who cast her as Cleopatra in John Dryden's "All for Love," the story of an older woman as desperate as she is powerful. A few years later, also for Kent, she played Medea, the infamous Euripides character who gave birth not only to Helena in "Mother Love" but to maniacal mothers everywhere. Rigg's performance, reportedly unrelenting in its intensity and searing in its histrionics, is still the subject of debate among theatergoers. People tend to love it or hate it, but no one who saw it will forget it. Kent also cast Rigg as the title character in the Bertolt Brecht classic "Mother Courage," her one noble role in a menagerie of vultures. But by the time she showed up last year (the Almeida tour came to New York in January 1999) in a double bill featuring adaptations of Racine's "Britannicus" and "Phedre," Rigg had irrevocably recast herself as the consummate bitch mother. This is how Sheridan Morley of the International Herald Tribune described her in "Britannicus": "Diana Rigg, lethally attired ... snaps her elegant handbag like a crocodile closing its teeth, thereby setting the mood for a wonderfully sinister and evil evening." Indeed, by playing both Aggripina, the mother of Nero, and then the title character in "Phedre" on the heels of "Medea" and "Mother Love," she's embraced a career choice that nearly eclipses Emma Peel, albeit for a smaller audience. New York Times critic Ben Brantley, writing about her performances in the Racine plays, recalled that Rigg had seemingly "provided the last word on strangulating maternal figures in her sublimely creepy performance in the television drama" before going on to give even more nuanced portrayals of manipulative and obsessive bad moms onstage. Is this a good thing? By thrusting herself into the maternal fray, Rigg avoided becoming a museum piece; never mind that she's redefined motherhood as something to be very, very afraid of. But has she also sacrificed any chance of ever again using her skills as a comedian? Can Emma Peel, with her sly sense of humor and whiplash comic timing, ever reemerge? In "The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries," Rigg won't exactly come full circle. It's apparently more drawing room comedy/whodunit than hip social satire. Rigg's character is a stylish old lady detective who makes snide asides into the camera, not a modern woman who turns the world on its head. Nonetheless, Rigg in any form is a wonder to see. As for Emma Peel, she's survived the end of the Cold War, the advent of Austin Powers and the shadow of Uma Thurman in last year's forgettable "Avengers" film. Would Rigg ever play Emma again? When a reporter asked her that question in 1989, she replied, "No, we won't do it again ... We never did."
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