Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) has written a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.
It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis (Jessica Lange) is supervising her teenage children, Carl (Jim Parsons) and Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger), as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them. Blending flares of imaginative theatricality, surreal farce, and deep tenderness, this beautiful roller coaster ride reveals timeless truths of love, family, and forgiveness.
“Mother Play” is not as great as plays Paula Vogel has written in the past – perhaps not as great as she might be able to make it in time – but under Tina Landau’s direction, it is a mesmerizing production, albeit not always easy to watch. That’s not only because of the fully-invested acting, but also because of the fully-infested sets (thanks to projection designer Shawn Duan.)
With their underwritten parts, Parsons gives us flamboyance and occasional anger, while Keenan-Bolger mostly serves as our quiet and patient guide. But it is Lange who stands at the center, giving a performance that throughout is full of nuance as she portrays this complicated mess of a woman. At one point, we are even allowed to hope for a genuine change in Phyllis's deeply embedded homophobia. But she is who she is, and even with whatever magical thinking Vogel has applied to her portrait, there is precious little redemption to be found here, except, perhaps, in the lessons that her daughter Martha, presumably the playwright's stand-in, has accrued. And maybe that's the raison d'être for the play itself: understanding and forgiveness.
2024 | Broadway |
Second Stage Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play | Celia Keenan-Bolger |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play | Jessica Lange |
2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Play | Paula Vogel |
2024 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance | Jessica Lange |
2024 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance | Jim Parsons |
2024 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Play | Mother Play |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Play | Celia Keenan-Bolger |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Play | Jim Parsons |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Play | Jessica Lange |
2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Play | Paula Vogel |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Jim Parsons |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Celia Keenan-Bolger |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Jessica Lange |
2024 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Paula Vogel |
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