Hey! Edie Falco is in a play! Yeah it sounds serious, but so did Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, and that wound up having nudity... How dark could Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize- and Drama Desk Award-winning play be? Well, let's just say if the Hemlock Society gave an award for drama, this would have been a winner. 
'night, Mother is a pretty convincing two-woman play, set in somewhere-way-out-in-the-country home Mama and Jessie have been sharing for an indefinite time since Jessie's husband left her. Brenda Blethyn's self-absorbed Mama Cates is pushed a little too far in the direction of chirping midwestern widow in the first part of the play, but she brings a real vulnerability to the later scenes. Edie Falco as her epileptic daugher Jessie, convinced that there's nothing she's good at and sure that she'll never truly enjoy even the taste of tapioca pudding, has planned her own death as neatly as any sociopathic genius.
As Jessie methodically lays out the various matters her mother's going to have to deal with on her own (she's made a list), from where the candy is kept to which dress to wear to the funeral, Mama bustles about, clearly challenged by something unexpected happening for the first time in a really, really long time. Theses are women that have stopped living a long time ago. And the play is most effective as a meditation on what can happen next.
Even though it's clear Jessie is expert at attending to Mama's every need, the play claims there's little else she can do. Or was ever able to do. And her one claim to control of her own life is to end it. 'night, Mother explores this idea a little bit, and explores the history of these two women, their marriages, their lives and their claustrophobic world a lot. The genius of the play is the way you wind up identifying with both characters in turn. And yet they are so self-absorbed, so very limited in the options they can see, that identifying with either is also chillingly uncomfortable.
You can see Mama's wheels turning as she occasionally actually slips into planning her future without Jessie. And Jessie's loathing for everyone and everything is palpable. There is a great deal of exposition with no truly grand revelations ("your father had fits, too." ) There is one moment that made the audience gasp loudly and, in at least one case, scream. All in all, it's a suffocatingly dark night of theater. At its best, it might inspire one to live a little more and exist a little less. Don't see it alone, and bring the Prozac.
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