Howard Miller takes a look at Mother Play at the Hayes Theatre:
Playwright Paula Vogel's brother Carl, who died of AIDS in 1988 and whose story she related in her partly autobiographical 1992 play The Baltimore Waltz, is back on stage, one of the trio of characters in her latest work, Mother Play, opening tonight at Second Stage's Hayes Theater. This is a well-acted, if thinly plotted character study, coming in at a breezy 105 minutes. It stars three popular, multiple-award winning actors: Jim Parsons as Carl, Celia Keenan-Bolger as his sister Martha, and Jessica Lange as their mother Phyllis (Vogel's mother's actual name). As an added attraction, there's also a troupe of dancing cockroaches on board. |
