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.
Stage and screen actress Linda Lavin, 78, who has made a specialty out of playing difficult and domineering Jewish mothers (most recently in the 2012 play 'The Lyons'), is at it again in Richard Greenberg's underwhelming dramatic comedy 'Our Mother's Brief Affair'...The play has witty lines and a few surprises, but it's also sluggish, messy and short on plot. Greenberg's attempts to play with time and dramatic structure...come off as labored. Meadow's staging is generally flat. Lavin, nailing her character's acerbity, is terrifically funny but also identifiable and sympathetic. Keller and Arrington, in underwritten and underwhelming roles, passively sit on the sidelines while Lavin tells the tale.
Not even the sainted Linda Lavin can save the deeply unpleasant character she plays in 'Our Mother's Brief Affair,' a lazy play by Richard Greenberg...Stubbornly lacking in dramatic tension, the uneventful narrative features a mean-spirited woman who may or may not be on her deathbed, recounting a closely held secret to her disagreeable grown children. There's little to fault in the attractively mounted and very well cast production...Lavin's keen acerbic wit is wasted...on a character like Anna, who is, truth to tell, a sour woman with bitter views of everyone but herself.
2015 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Original Broadway Production Broadway |
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