[NEohioPAL] Review of "'night, Mother" at Beck Center for the Arts

[Bob Abelman]

'night, Mother' is neither pleasant nor easy, just superb

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the Cleveland Jewish News on 3/28/14

 

"What did Dad say to you the night he died?" asks Jessie in the play "'night, Mother," currently on stage at the Beck Center for the Arts.  To which Thelma replies, "He didn't say a thing.  It was his last chance not to talk to me, and he took full advantage of it." 

 

Jessie and Thelma are engaged in a last chance conversation of their own, for Jessie - Thelma's damaged and now thoroughly broken adult daughter - is about to take her own life. 

 

But unlike Thelma's husband, they choose to talk about everything that had never been discussed between them.  The result is this riveting, 90-minute drama told in real time in Thelma's small, nondescript kitchen and living room.  No flashbacks.  No intermission.  No escape.  

 

Using deceptively simple language to reveal the agonizing guilt and unrelenting emptiness that define the lives of these characters, "'night, Mother" - written by Marsha Norman and the winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Drama - is the nightmare conversation we hope never to have outside the theater. 

 

Quite frankly, it is not an easy or pleasant conversation to witness inside the theater. 

 

The caustic casualness with which Jessie checks off items on her final to-do list - "show Mama how to load the washing machine," "have a last unsatisfactory cup of cocoa," "take my life" - is emotionally jarring.    

 

Jessie's disclosure that the person she wanted to be "never came and never will. so there's no reason to stay" is gut-wrenching.  

 

Thelma's last-ditch effort to convince her death-determined daughter to "stay a little longer" is heartbreaking.  

 

Despite the inclination to look away from the human wreckage, watching Dorothy Silver and Laura Perrotta work their way through this one-act of agony is something not to be missed.

 

For more of this review, go to:

http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/features/leisure/arts/article_1ee869e2-b387-11e3-b485-0019bb2963f4.html#.UzCVwNsq72A.facebook
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