On the verge of death for the umpteenth time, Anna (Linda Lavin) makes a shocking confession to her grown children: an affair from her past that just might have resonance beyond the family. But how much of what she says is true? While her children try to separate fact from fiction, Anna fights for a legacy she can be proud of. With razor-sharp wit and extraordinary insight, Our Mother's Brief Affair considers the sweeping, surprising impact of indiscretions both large and small.
To describe Linda Lavin as flawless in 'Our Mother's Brief Affair' suggests we went looking for flaws, which could hardly be less true. Lavin's singular qualities - the voice that grates and comforts at the same time, the way she expresses an aside with little more than a deep sigh - could, at this point in her rich career, have frozen into a kind of tragicomic Kabuki. Instead, once again, the actress has channeled her special gifts into another in a seemingly infinite variety of smart, disappointed grown-ups who, in lesser hands, might just be Jewish monster-moms. Best of all, Lavin is challenged here by playwright Richard Greenberg's lean, lush dialogue, an intimate plot that goes in surprising directions and a character written with as much underlying compassion as overriding impatience.
It takes some doing to stifle the prickly humor of Linda Lavin, but Our Mother's Brief Affair makes her character both an unreliable narrator and one who's astringent to the point of unpleasantness...A madly overworked but underdeveloped little piece, it mistakes narration for dramatization, and verbiage for genuine feeling...Greenberg has reached for the elusive links between past, present and future before, in richer and more compelling ways. And while Meadow's actors are all quite accomplished, they struggle to find any heart in characters so unrelentingly 'written' that it sucks the life out of them, giving us no reason to care.
2015 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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