From one of America's most acclaimed playwrights, 4-time Tony Award winner Terrence McNally comes Mothers and Sons, a powerful new Broadway play that explores the truths of who we are and who we love.
Tony and Emmy Award-winner Tyne Daly stars in Mothers and Sons, a play about a mother who pays a surprise visit to the New York apartment of her late son's ex-partner, who is now married to another man and has a young son. Challenged to face how society has changed around her - without her - she is finally able to see the rich life her son might have led. Strikingly timely and deeply compassionate, Mothers and Sons is about the evolving definition of family and the healing power of forgiveness.
Terrence McNally tries to cover a lot of territory in 'Mothers and Sons': the relationships between mothers and their gay sons; the satisfactions of gay marriage; the dark, enduring legacy of AIDS; and the generation gap within the gay community. Lucky for this high-profile scribe, he has sensitive interpreters of these themes in thesps Frederick Weller and the ever-astonishing Tyne Daly. But the ideas are so diffuse and the dramatic structure so disjointed, there's no cohesion to the material and no point to the plot.
With 'Mothers & Sons,' McNally has again crafted a narrative that could not be more particular to time (the present) and location (the progressive Upper West Side). This time, it's a story rooted in optimism, and one that manages to look simultaneously over its shoulder and straight ahead. Daly gives an exquisite performance as a lonely, suicidal woman desperate to imagine a life her son might have led...Together, Daly and Weller have dynamic chemistry, lurching from moments of mutual respect to moments of accusation, and back...I thought 'Mothers & Sons' was fantastic, for how effectively it locks down this unique period of time that is 2014, in New York City, amid the explosive progress of the gay rights movement in the last handful of years. I hope it finds a broad audience. If you're under 30, 'Mothers & Sons' is a history lesson; if you're older, it may feel like the sun on your face.
2014 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | Mothers and Sons |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Susan Dietz |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Jack Thomas |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Peter Stern |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Tom Smedes |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Sanford Robertson |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Brunish-Trinchero |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Roberta Pereira |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Ed Filipowski |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Mark Lee |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Lams Production |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Ken Davenport |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Paul Boskind |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Hunter Arnold |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Loraine Alterman Boyle |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Barbara Freitag |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Debbie Bisno |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Paula Wagner |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Roy Furman |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Tom Kirdahy |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Terrence McNally |
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