Mother Play

by Paula Vogel
2nd Stage
The Helen Hayes Theater, New York City

We've all been through the hassle of moving house. Imagine having to do it five times. Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Paula Vogel's brand new play, which premieres on Broadway this spring, is subtitled "A Play in Five Evictions" and charts the tumultuous journey of a family as they move from one apartment to the next in Washington DC.

Opening in 1964 and spanning several decades, Mother Play follows the newly divorced Phyllis (Jessica Lange) who arrives at her rental basement apartment, a squalid room wedged next to the trash cans, with her teenage kids in tow, the tomboyish Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger) and bookish Carl (Jim Parsons). A spat with the landlord over hygiene issues soon escalates into outright acrimony and they soon find themselves being shown the door. As the years roll by, the apartments get better but the relationships between the family grow increasingly more fractured.

Vogel's warm but rather underpowered script grips one at the outset but gradually loses steam. There are some lovely observations about the pressures of being a single parent and tense family relationships but the whole affair feels a little staid with a fairly predictable arc of a closeted child, parental rejection and awkward reconciliations. It’s partly based on Vogel’s own family life with the Carl character being a stand-in for her late brother who had the same name. Keenan-Bolger's Martha, the narrator and voice of reason in the play, does a lot of heavy-lifting in simply trying to set each scene and all the exposition given to her character feels a tad overwritten. 

That said, there are incredible performances all round. Tony-Award-winning Jessica Lange is in her element as the downtrodden but dignified Phyllis, a woman desperate to find a new life for her family after a bad divorce. She chain smokes and binge drinks, treating her kids like personal assistants as she downs cocktails and parades around in thrifted designer clothes. Yet, behind all the bluster is a deeply unhappy woman who knows that her influence is solely fading away. It’s a scene-stealing performance that shines in moments both big and small. A wordless sequence where she sits alone at home, having a microwave meal, is particularly searing.

Photo Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

The lanky, poker-faced Parsons, best known to audiences as geeky genius Sheldon Cooper on hit television show The Big Bang Theory, channels his gift for physical comedy and snarky one-liners to delicious effect. “Don’t gnaw on the olive branch”, he deadpans to his sister when Phyllis shows an interest in her life. One is not especially convinced of the 51-year-old’s ability to convincingly play a teenager (something that comes far more naturally to the more diminutive Keenan-Bolger) but Parsons is nonetheless massively entertaining to watch and capably hits the script's comic and tragic beats.

Tina Landau's production is clean and crisp, the various scene transitions being done by the cast members themselves. David Zinn’s period-perfect, economical set cleverly conjures up a variety of apartments over the years through the reconfiguration of key pieces of furniture and deft use of lamps that descend from above. Vogel may not have crafted an especially memorable story here but Mother Play remains a moving, bittersweet ode to the pleasures and pains of family life.

The Crystalwords score: 3.5/5