Studio Theatre: The Mother Play

 This production brings together a couple of things that I dearly love.  Paula Vogel and Kate Eastwood Norris.  Both are something of local treasures here in the DMV, and Paula is arguably one of the great living playwrights in America.  My introduction to Paula's plays started at the top with her Pulitzer Prize winning "How I Learned To Drive."  It was a tour de force of family intrigue, of coming of age in a dysfunctional extended family, and--at its powerful, explosive beating heart: Incest.  I was left breathless and silent, and I thought, I've gotta see everything this woman writes.  Unfortunately, in spite of a decent catalog of works, her plays do not get produced that often.  The only other one I've seen to date, "Indecent" was likewise complex and compelling, a fascinating play.

So now, I get another shot of her with her most recent work, "The Mother Play".  Loosely draped in the monikers of the Herman family, this is by her own admission the most auto biographical of all of her works--and after "How I Learned To Drive," that's saying something.  Tethered to geography of a string of apartments and condos that she grew up in with her mother and brother, the story takes us through years of growing up under the wings of an alcoholic, bigoted, homophobic matriarch while both she and her brother were gay.  At 90 minutes, it clips along rather briskly and so it chooses the moments to share offering both the lowest of the low, as well as, an occasional epiphany or two.  Many of which are short lived.  

Paula is around 10 years or so my senior, and the action starts when she is 12 in the early 1960's.  The mother wants more for her life than the cards she's been dealt, and as she says towards the end of the play, "I never wanted to be a mother."  The evictions occur after the sub-standard condition of the apartments become unbearable, until finally with time and salary bumps, she can afford more live-able digs.  The conflict between her and her children's sexuality leads to the expulsion of her brother from the family altogether.  Living his best gay life in the 1980's leads to his premature death from AIDS.  It is a cause for an uncharacteristic reconciliation that only backfires and get the mother evicted once again out of fear of the disease.  In the end, we are left with a mother in the grips of dementia and a daughter grasping at the straws of forgiveness that this disease drops before her.

It is intimate.  It is moving.  It was wonderfully acted by all three cast members; and held together with the iron fist of Kate Eastwood Norris as "the Mother".  Kate = excellence.  Her timing, her commitment to the integrity of the character no matter what is truly a wonder to experience.

A friend at work asked me what I was planning to do over Thanksgiving break and I mentioned the play and began to tell her about it.  As I did, she surreptitiously googled it and found some theatre critic's review of it.  Practically before I could stop her, she began reading quotes from it.  Thankfully, I was able to cut her off before she said too much.  I explained that I do not want to know what anyone else thinks of any play or musical I go to see.  I'm only interested in forming my own unadulterated opinions.  Which I am more than capable of doing.  The one remark that came through and stayed in my head was that the individual thought the play was "tedious, like watching paint dry."  While that is a great cliche, it didn't mirror my experience in the least.

Finally, the various segments are defined by an announcement of the eviction and the name and address of the new apartment/condo.  Holy Cow!  For a few years in the 1980's she lived with her mother and brother in a condo in a highrise that I can see from my front stoop!  It's just a minute's walk from my home.  Now, that was really cool.

Daughter Martha [Zoe Mann] and Mother Phyllis [Kate Eastwood Norris]

Listening to mother pontificate while she begins her evening ritual of cigarettes and gin.

Martha with her Brother Carl [Stanley Bahorek] discussing their mutual secrets, after he lends her some of his clothes to wear.

A rare moment of detente after the death of a relative.

Abandoned by her children, the Mother is left with her wigs and her gin...