Mother Play Broadway Reviews

Thirty or so years ago, Vogel told a reporter, “I like theater that makes me feel like it’s a healing.” That’s what “Mother Play” is, a balm that comes in cardboard boxes and packing tape. It honors the dead by making them alive again and nurtures the living by providing a place to put a daughter’s love and rage. Martha’s box is not Pandora’s. It’s just another way of organizing a life.

Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are very good indeed in Mother Play, but there’s no question to whom it belongs. Lange is magnificent, especially in this production’s most moving scene: a long passage that the script calls the Phyllis Ballet. Phyllis is alone onstage, because she has pushed everyone away. There is no dialogue, because she has no one to talk to. She stares out motionless at the audience for a discomfiting amount of time, letting us project onto her face like an actress in a film; then, in a silky magenta robe, she enacts a kind of sad silent comedy, setting a dignified dinner for herself and dousing her food in hot sauce. She has fallen down the well of loneliness. Bringing decades of experience to bear, Lange is riveting—and so, by extension, is Phyllis.

While most of the production works flawlessly, there are two major missteps. Because viewers are well aware of the time periods (Martha calls out the years throughout the show’s 105-minute run time), some of the major plot points are highly predictable, taking away the story’s emotional power. Moreover, one particular scene of Phyllis at home alone simply doesn’t work. The segment is supposed to depict her loneliness and isolation, but the wordless 10 minutes is overlong and dull, belaboring a point that could have been made in less than half the time. Still, despite its imperfections, “Mother Play” is a genuinely engaging examination of a family trying to find equilibrium.

In addition to her years of teaching playwriting at Brown and Yale, Vogel is best-known for her Pulitzer-winning 1997 play How I Learned to Drive, which finally made it to Broadway in 2022 and remains unquestionably one of the very best works of recent American theater. That’s a hard standard to match, especially since the various twists and turns are almost impossible to predict when watching How I Learned to Drive for the first time. By contrast, Mother Play probably isn’t the first story you’ve ever seen about American parents failing to understand their children during the ‘60s and '70s. Some creative choices don’t pay off, but Vogel’s latest hits the emotional beats it needs to, and is certainly a powerful reminder to call your mom now and then.

“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.

Under the direction of Tina Landau, Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are predictably fine in their roles, even if they’re not being stretched much. But it’s Lange who commands the evening, displaying the sort of star power and stage command that make her a Broadway diva. Just the sight of her in various outfits, including ‘60s-era hippie denim, is a pleasure, and it’s worth the price of admission to see her launch into disco dancing (the audience, predictably, goes wild). She’s even given a lengthy silent, solo interlude in which she listens to music, has a drink, smokes, and attempts to eat a frozen meal that’s made no less unpalatable by generous doses of hot sauce. Other than conveying the character’s loneliness in her older years, the scene doesn’t have much reason for being. But as brilliantly played by Lange, it’s an acting lesson that every budding thespian should study.

“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.)

“Mother Play” has the aura of a valedictorian effort, the completion of a canon by coming home, even a push for a confirmed spot among the greats of this era of American playwriting. Vogel certainly does not shy from her own admiration of Martha. It’s especially apparent in the final scene when she visits and cares for a mother with dementia whom the play has just shown us she has good reason to ignore. Some writers would worry about how that looked, but I suspect Vogel decided that was the truth of it. It’s her mother’s play after all. And who could argue with that?

As Phyllis, Lange has to carry the play, which she manages to do in fits and starts. What she can do is cast a spell. In a wonderful, wordless sequence when Phyllis has been abandoned by both Carl and Martha, she putters around an empty apartment, devoid of purpose but retaining the posture of a woman raised to be watched, finding humor and subtle tragedy in the way she slathers hot sauce on a microwaved dinner.

Even at a time of overwhelming competition on Broadway, there may well be enough check boxes ticked for some – Lange dancing to I Will Survive in a gay club definitely straddles a few – but Mother Play isn’t quite specific or emotionally searing enough to live beyond its admittedly alluring reference points. It works in moments, most of them the result of Lange’s ineffable presence, but as a whole, it’s not as commanding as her or its title demand, perhaps more estranged aunt than mother.

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.

The play works because of the cast’s incredible ability to play both young and old characters, and solemn and funny ones. In particular, Parsons’s humor shines as Carl, a quick-witted genius who holds the family together. One of the play’s throughlines is touch — or rather, the lack of it. Director Tina Landau beautifully incorporates moments of closeness and distance through careful staging.