An Evictable Menagerie: Paula Vogel’s Mother Play

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jessica Lange successful Mother Play. Photo: Joan Marcus

The rubric Mother Play is truthful bully you tin recognize wherefore the playwright Paula Vogel held onto it for a decennary and a half. Her caller drama, she’s said successful an interview, came from years of musing implicit the thought of fleshing retired a play astir her ain parent and giving it that winking name. She yet enactment pen to insubstantial and wrote the bulk of the enactment itself successful a flash successful precocious 2022. Vogel had already touched connected their narration successful her masterpiece How I Learned to Drive, but evidently she wanted to springiness that oblivious yet exacting Southern matriarch much lines — understandable if you retrieve that play’s sharp-enough-to-cut-you monologue known arsenic “A Mother’s Guide to Social Drinking.” There’s already wit and wound to the operation “mother play,” fixed other foodstuff by the usage, originating successful ballroom and present precise online, of “mother” arsenic a breathless compliment. (All-caps “MOTHER” shot caps are disposable for acquisition astatine the Hayes Theater.) That cleverness, however, has a domineering quality. Her title, similar galore theatrical matriarchs, is awfully hard to unrecorded up to, which is besides what Mother Play struggles to do.

Vogel gives the play a brisk structuring conceit: Mother Play takes spot implicit the people of 5 evictions, arsenic Phyllis (Jessica Lange), and her children Carl (Jim Parsons) and Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger, the Vogel stand-in, besides looking backmost from astir the present) bounce done apartments successful and astir Washington, D.C. Their father, arsenic Martha explains successful her opening monologue, had a wont of not paying rent, truthful they’re utilized to moving, but erstwhile the enactment kicks disconnected he’s abandoned Phyllis and the kids — Martha is 11, Carl 13 — and they’re fending for themselves. They commencement retired successful a custodial sub-basement portion with Carl assigned to instrumentality retired the building’s trash. David Zinn’s acceptable is afloat of cardboard moving boxes and what you mightiness telephone “well loved” furniture, each connected wheels truthful that the actors tin rotation it around; Lange is introduced with the rotation of an Eames chair. Occasionally, a projected cockroach scurries crossed the fridge and, successful a fewer sequences orchestrated by manager Tina Landau, the roaches signifier a gyration of their ain and puppets look and creation on the ramparts of the set. Your mileage whitethorn alteration connected the conception of a creepy-crawly cockroach imagination ballet, but I person to accidental I recovered it delightful.

Vogel’s publication asks for that benignant of theatricality from a manager — “by the way: this play is not naturalistic,” she writes successful her instauration — but those distancing flights of fancy request to beryllium anchored by a beardown consciousness of intent. Her publication assembles the contradictions that marque up her mother, but it doesn’t supply a way done them. Phyllis is resourceful and ingratiating, particularly erstwhile she needs thing from men, but tin besides go helpless and babelike connected some men and alcohol. She’s acold and cutting, particularly to Martha, whom she decides aboriginal connected has small imaginable and whitethorn beryllium gay, and supportive and exacting, particularly to her beloved lad Carl, her aureate kid (though she’d alternatively not deliberation astir his sexuality). Good worldly not yet afloat refined and processed. Vogel adds much details astir Phyllis — her adjacent narration with her ain mother, the kids’ grandmother, emerges aboriginal connected — but doesn’t synthesize them to insight. Phyllis turns connected Carl erstwhile she discovers the information of his sexuality, past connected Martha. She has a late-in-life crook to crystal-ball luck telling. The ands of her quality heap up without a therefore to bring america determination new. Phyllis emerges arsenic a fearsome, complicated, adjacent pitiable figure, idiosyncratic it indispensable beryllium hard to constitute about, but she ne'er becomes idiosyncratic I tin spot successful afloat focus.

Vogel besides tends to get caught successful references to different works, which bent supra Mother Play similar heavy vines, some successful the penning and the performances. Carl, whom Vogel has besides written astir successful her elegy The Baltimore Waltz, grows up accelerated and hyperliterate. He tells his sister to work Virginia Woolf (and to perfectly not work The Well of Loneliness, which her parent has fixed her, a large small detail) and encourages her to use for colleges she doesn’t deliberation she tin get into. In his teenage playacting, Carl is fond of adopting the mode of a worldly aesthete, successful the mode that a batch of cheery kids unreal to beryllium a benignant of Truman Capote oregon Tennessee Williams. Vogel encourages truthful galore echoes betwixt Mother Play and The Glass Menagerie that the dependable of the second starts to drown retired the former. Carl truly resembles Tom Wingfield, while Phyllis is surely an Amanda Wingfield (with a bully magnitude of Momma Rose), and Martha is stuck with (and resents) being Laura. I would person appreciated much of her resentment, successful fact; there’s a large premise successful Laura trying to claw her mode distant from Amanda and Tom, if Vogel oregon idiosyncratic other wants to instrumentality that head-on.

To that end, Lange played Amanda successful 2005; Keenan-Bolger was Laura successful 2013; Parsons ever seems similar he’s trying to audition for Williams when helium gets serious; and here, each 3 actors’ performances get cramped and constrained, possibly owing to their consciousness representation of those different roles. Parsons, especially, struggles to get nether Carl’s skin. He gives bully exaggerated sashay and dewy-eyed fantasizing but doesn’t person a bully mode to propulsion backmost the vigor and fto different colors in. We get the show he’s putting on, some to fulfill his parent and defy the satellite astir him, but small consciousness of what lies underneath. Keenan-Bolger’s portion is adjacent trickier, requiring her to flit betwixt representation and commentary, and she pulls it disconnected straightforwardly, arsenic she happens to beryllium an adept successful the peculiar tract of being an big playing a kid (see To Kill a Mockingbird and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee). But it would beryllium bully to spot her conscionable get to play an adult.

As Phyllis, Lange has to transportation the play, which she manages to bash successful fits and starts. What she tin bash is formed a spell. In a wonderful, wordless series erstwhile Phyllis has been abandoned by some Carl and Martha, she putters astir an bare apartment, devoid of intent but retaining the posture of a pistillate raised to beryllium watched, uncovering wit and subtle calamity successful the mode she slathers blistery condiment connected a microwaved dinner. In different scene, she instructs Martha however to locomotion crossed a country arsenic a woman, thorax up, hips Slinky-ing, lips pursed. It’s crackling, if indulgent — Lange giving the assemblage the steel-coiffured Southern grande dame she has played connected TV for Ryan Murphy. And often, Phyllis has — is — conscionable that benignant of posture.

That show needs different crook of the screw to get past that, and the publication doesn’t springiness her capable torque. “Gay sons and mothers!” Martha says, exasperated by Phyllis’s clasp connected Carl. “Gay men transportation a lifelong guilt due to the fact that their small heads popped retired of their mother’s vagina, which they deliberation is sacred. Or immoderate specified bullshit.” The enactment is existent of a dynamic, and it gets a bully laughter successful the room, but it compartmentalizes Phyllis and Carl excessively neatly. Vogel’s characters are bully astatine that — excessively good. They’ve spent their lives arranging their things into moving boxes, and they person the aforesaid clasp connected their emotions. In different too-on-the-nose exchange, Carl announces to Martha that “it’s over, isn’t it?” “What?” she says. “Childhood,” helium says. Don’t you privation to unpack that?

Mother Play is astatine the Hayes Theater.