SEARCH CurtainUp
REVIEWS
FEATURES
NEWS (Etcetera)
LISTINGSS
Broadway
Off-Broadway
BOOKS and CDs
OTHER PLACES
Berkshires
London
Los Angeles
Philadelphia
Elsewhere
QUOTES
On TKTS
LETTERS TO EDITOR
FILM
LINKS
MISCELLANEOUS
Free Updates
Masthead
NYC Weather
The Mother
By Jenny Sandman
|
This is barren metaphysical suffering in the fourth dimension.
---Witkiewicz |
Tina Shepard as the mother; Suli Holum as the fiancee's father
(Photo: Adair Iacono )
|
A provocateur, Witkiewicz thought theatre should not be subservient to reality, and that performance was more important than the text. He postulated that theatre should not be based on external or psychological reality but on "pure form," like experimental painting. The productions of his plays were largely doomed to failure, usually with bad reviews and only one or two performances each. Though he wrote over 30 plays (mostly between 1918-1924), ten were lost in WWII, and only seven were published in his lifetime.
In the late 1920s, Witkiewicz abandoned theatre for fiction and painting, producing hundreds of paintings and several books and essays-often done under the influence of various narcotics. His works were full of inconsistent psychology and logic, metaphysical anguish, and chronological and spatial anomalies. Suicide, death, and despair were his leitmotiv, and he was eventually consumed by his art, committing suicide in 1939.
The Mother is one of his more famous plays. Though it has no true plot, it involves an alcoholic mother. She loves her son, Leon, and dotes on him, but also manipulates him. Jewish mothers have nothing on her for guilt trips. But she is getting old, and is an alcoholic, and is also a morphine addict-thanks to Leon, who supplies her with the dope.
Leon is an intellectual, and a revolutionary of sorts. He gets married, and then the play begins to unravel. They all take cocaine one night, making the mother go blind and then die. While Leon is grieving over the corpse, his mother comes back to visit him-as a young woman, with her young husband (Leon's father). She reveals that the corpse is really a doll, and then the stagehands come out to dismantle the set.
Sound confusing? That's not the half of it. Leon and his fiancée are played variously by themselves and by dolls, which are manipulated by the mother and then by Leon. Video screens are scattered about the stage, which play back parts of the play or show different angles of what's currently happening. The stage manager and the musicians make appearances within the play. At the end, the "reality" of the play breaks down completely, as Leon rants and the young mother looks for a way out of the theatre-while the stagehands are dismantling everything. Witkiewicz was a genius, but a mad genius, and his works could be considered an acquired taste. If you are not already a fan of the avant-garde, Witkiewicz is not for you.
But if you are, The Mother is a rare treat. Tina Shepard is a marvel as the insane mother, as is Jim Fletcher as Leon. The music, by Brendan Connelly, is brilliantly discordant. Witkiewicz is not often performed, and this multimedia production is true to his original intent. He saw future life as mechanized and soulless; this production, so jumbled and discontinuous and dependent upon dolls and TVs, would please him greatly. If you go, don't try to make sense of it; just sit back and let it wash over you.
|
The Mother By S.I. Witkiewicz Translated by Daniel Gerould and C.S. Durer Directed by Brooke O'Harra With Tina Shepard, Jim Fletcher, Suli Holum, Barbara Lanciers, Wilson Hall, Nicky Paraiso and Zakia Babb Costume Design by Audrey Robinson Lighting Design by Michael Phillips Music by Brendan Connelly Video by Bilal Khan Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf LaMama ETC, 74 East 4th Street 212-475-7710; www.lamama.org Th-Sat at 10:00 pm, 5:30 pm Sun-- $15 or $12 members/tdf Box office (212) 475-7710; on-line ticketing available Through April 13 Running time 1:20, with no intermission Review by Jenny Sandman based on March 30 performance |
Mendes at the Donmar
Our Review
At This Theater
Leonard Maltin's 2003 Movie and Video Guide
Ridiculous!The Theatrical Life & Times of Charles Ludlam
Somewhere For Me, a Biography of Richard Rodgers
The New York Times Book of Broadway: On the Aisle for the Unforgettable Plays of the Last Century
6, 500 Comparative Phrases including 800 Shakespearean Metaphors by CurtainUp's editor.
Click image to buy.
Go here for details and larger image.
