Michael Kaye, Nancy E. Carroll

Producing Artistic Director Paul Daigneault is an experienced director of McNally's plays and has a personal connection to his work as a gay man. He can appreciate the groundbreaking nature of the playwright's stories and characters, both in this play and in earlier works, and acclaim that he places his focus on AIDS without turning it into a screed. Mothers and Sons is in the forefront of a later generation of plays about the disease, in which the crisis is in the past, but the echoes and repercussions are very real and sometimes very raw. In a play like Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, we can be transported back to the horror and fear of the burgeoning "gay cancer," but McNally chooses to show us how his four intergenerational characters are experiencing the aftermath in the here and now.

Andre's recently widowed mother Katharine (Nancy E. Carroll) stops briefly in New York, en route from her home in Dallas to spend Christmas in Rome. Ostensibly dropping by his Upper West Side apartment to deliver her son's diary to Cal (Michael Kaye), Katharine has a hidden agenda that she can't even articulate to herself. However, she bears her loss as an open wound and partly blames Cal for Andre's death. As if to prove her point, she asserts that her son was not gay when he arrived in New York. Katharine and Cal have had no contact with each other in the two decades since Andre's memorial service, and Cal is appropriately flummoxed by her appearance out of the blue. Katharine's needle is stuck in the 1990s and she resents that Cal's world continues to spin forward since he found a new love with whom to build a life.

Carroll's stiff posture, stony expression and unrelenting hard exterior establish her character from the opening scene between Katharine and Cal. As the latter, Kaye virtually twists himself into knots to crack her shell; together, they make the awkward discomfort between them palpable, but they go through a mélange of authentic emotional states during the course of the play. Mothers and Sons focuses on Katharine's journey and Carroll is achingly good at portraying her implacability, forged like steel in the last twenty years. Still, she also gives the impression that she has made this visit in the hopes of finding something that can get her unstuck, that can return hope to her life. The change she undergoes is subtle, best measured in baby steps, but we notice it because Carroll makes it look real.

Cal is caught in the middle between his memories of the life he might have had with Andre and the unexpected life he lives with Will (Nile Hawver) and Bud (Liam Lurker). Separated by fifteen years in age, Cal never expected to have children, while Will always planned to be a father. This difference partially defines their relationship, but their mutual love and respect enables each man to genuinely try to understand where the other is coming from and map a new direction for their family. Hawver makes Will appropriately edgy as the younger, more hip partner, but also comes across as the parent who is responsible, yet relaxed in his role. Lurker is a charmer, bringing a natural and precocious quality to this new-age child.

McNally draws complex characters, using them to illustrate degrees of sadness and joy in his story. At one end of the spectrum, there is the innocent, happy Bud, open and willing to share. Katharine is at the opposite pole, almost totally sad and full of regrets, unable to see any way out of her despair. The two men reside somewhere in between, with Cal balancing his great loss and his great joy, and Will appreciating what life allows him and trying to fend off anyone who would jeopardize their situation. The drama in the play hinges on this dichotomy and, for the audience, it is interesting to note which philosophy resonates with your own point of view, which character speaks to you. Mothers and Sons will make you laugh and it may make you cry, but it should also make you take stock of your family. The playwright assures us that change is possible, but it helps to have milk and cookies to sustain you.

Mothers and Sons, performances through June 6, 2015, at SpeakEasy Stage Company, Roberts Studio Theatre in the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA; Box Office 617-933-8600 or www.SpeakEasyStage.com.

Written by Terrence McNally, Directed by Paul Daigneault; Scenic Design, Erik D. Diaz; Costume Design, Charles Schoonmaker; Lighting Design, Jeff Adelberg; Sound Design, David Remedios; Production Stage Manager, Dawn Schall Saglio

Cast: Nancy E. Carroll, Nile Hawver, Michael Kaye, Liam Lurker

Photo: Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo