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” marks Lange’s fourth engagement on Broadway but the first time she has originated a role there. In its excellence, her work in “Mother Play” recalls what she did on stage as Mary Tyrone in “Long Day’s Journey into Night” in 2016. The only difference is that Vogel gives Lange a few more notes to explore, most of them above the staff in the comic stratosphere. Before this review makes “Mother Play” sound like a dirge, it is really a very funny play. When Martha doesn’t accept Phyllis’ attempt to make amends, Carl cautions, “Don’t gnaw on the olive branch!”
At times it seems like Vogel has been inspired by Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. At other times—with that problematic mother losing composure during a series of revealing telephone calls, that ignored and emotionally damaged daughter, that son itching to leave home and go out into the dangerous world—it seems like Vogel is consciously giving us an updated version of what might or could have happened to those forlorn Wingfields had they, and Williams, existed 30 years later. In any event, Vogel’s play and players merit a visit to the Helen Hayes. Only not as a Mother’s Day treat for dear old mom.
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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