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.
Linda Lavin is alternately sardonic and fragile in the New York premiere of Richard Greenberg's drama 'Our Mother's Brief Affair'...The notion of 'legacy' weighs heavily in the drama, which touches on themes such as the suburban dream, and the desire, when one's life is nearing its end, 'to be known'...Lavin...paints a balanced portrait here, as a Long Island mom who dutifully raised two kids despite being in a marriage that was never romantic... Greenberg...is making a point about 'scale,' that some loads we carry through life-the burdens that bring us shame-are worse than others, and that after a point we must forgive ourselves. It's a point I'd gander he might have made more elegantly without the plot twist, but nonetheless, with Lavin leading the cast, it's a beautifully performed play.
It can't be easy for anyone to live up to Mr. Greenberg's analytical eloquence, especially in a lyrical memory play in which the object of his descriptions is often required to stand mute and embody what's being said about her. Yet throughout this Manhattan Theater Club production, directed a shade too tentatively by Lynne Meadow, Ms. Lavin's poses unfailingly match, and even amplify, Mr. Greenberg's exquisite prose. Anna is but the latest addition to a memorable gallery of sharp-tongued Jewish mothers created by Ms. Lavin during the past several decades...But none of those roles asked quite as much of her as Anna, who is required to exist in both middle and old age, in recollection and reality, sometimes all at once. Ms. Lavin fulfills these demands with such thoroughness and subtlety that I wish the play that surrounds her were more compellingly realized.
2015 | Broadway |
Manhattan Theatre Club Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Videos