MOTHER PLAY

Review By Celia Ipiotis

A whiff of magnolia permeates the air surrounding Phyllis (Jessica Lange) in Paula Vogel’s A Mother Play: In Five Evictions.  A reluctant mother, she bore two children, shed an abusive husband and relocated over and over again.

Succinctly directed  by Tina Landau, the play travels over a span of 40 years from the late 1960’s through 2000. Frustrated by life and her eternal attachment to and dismissal of her family, Lang is happiest when she smokes, downs gin, dances and reminiscences about the before-time.

We meet 14 year old Carl (Jim Parsons), a precocious, outgoing child who despite his  bookishness proves vastly entertaining. Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger), his sister, is 14 and much more circumspect. Naturally, Phyllis favors Carl who shares her fondness for fashion and music. 

Regardless of Phyllis’ self-centered, myopic attitude, the children doggedly hunger for her approval. Not what one would call a nurturing mother figure, Phyllis nevertheless relies on her children for human connection. 

Underscored by a thin line of darkness, the drama is laced with levity, and even some gaiety. When Carl and Phyllis break into a dance to Disco Inferno, Lang proves she’s got game and is most definitely a hot, dancing babe.

In fact, I would have liked Vogel to include more dance scenes in the play, because in those couple of passages, Phyllis’ flirtatious, confident personality beams.

Despite her financial hardships, Jessica dresses in a very feminine style of the time, nicely put together by costume designer Toni-Leslie James.

Unable to afford much more than the basics, one of the old family games centers on finding and killing cockroaches– something way too familiar to NYC inhabitants.  Clearly favoring the son, Lang’s passive-aggressive attitude towards Martha hurts and hardens her. Every handful of years, Phyllis moves to another apartment that includes the same furniture (by set designer David Zinn) shrewdly rearranged. Sometimes it’s nice, other times not so nice. 

Despite her surroundings, Jessica never forgets her former feminine allure. At one point in the play, Phyllis is seen inside one of her nicer apartments, alone. Like a silent film, we watch her elegantly pour a drink, sit on the couch, get up, change the channel on the radio, pace, think, change the music again and simply be alone. Fascinating, in part because of Lang’s ability to expertly execute the choreography and express a universe of thoughts.

When the “reveals” start to unfurl, Phyllis can’t understand her children’s decisions. First Carl pronounces he’s gay and later Martha divulges her lesbian relationship.

Drawn over the 1980’s, a grim time for the gay community, Carl is caught up in the ring of AIDS. At that time, many parents were forced to see their sons for who they really were; some turned their backs on the dying children, others found space to hold them near.

Phyllis does her best. And then it’s just Martha and Phyllis. A new dynamic emerges: respect.

In total, the cast is outstanding. Parsons wins audiences with his charm, Keenan-Bolger’s compelling, straight shooting personality garners sympathy while Lang’s indomitable personality and compromised existence crashes into a wave of dashed expectations.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis