Twenty years after a difficult
meeting at a gravesite, two people once again try to connect. Yet keep each
other cautiously at bay. They are Katherine Gerard (Tyne Daly), who
lost her son Andre to AIDS, and Cal Porter (Frederck Weller) who had
been his lover. (This gravesite meeting was dramatized, in fact, a few more
years than twenty ago in a one act play and then a PBS teleplay called André’s
Mother). Now, out of the blue, and for reasons still unarticulated, Katherine
has contacted Cal, who is doing well and still in NYC. She’s in his apartment
with him now, an apartment he shares with his new, much younger partner of
several years, Will (Bobby Steggert) and their adopted son, Bud (Grayson
Taylor).
Since
there’s precious little story, per se, just the peeling away of layers to get
to the nitty-gritty, I’m loathe to say too much more. Save only that in Mothers
and Sons, Terrence McNally has
compellingly dramatized an aftermath confrontation. This is a post-crisis play
(if not precisely post-AIDS). It looks not upon the issues that exploded when
the epidemic was at its height, but rather the ones—some of the
ones—that are left for survivors, and the families of the lost, to sort
out.
Typically
for McNally, there is much humor, even though the proceedings are serious, for
he is also dealing with human foibles, and those often tend toward the
laughable. The cast is impeccable—the nuances of Tyne Daly, as always,
add up to a master class in detail, craft and control—and the direction
of Sheryl Kaller has an immaculateness to match; she seems to have done
nothing (as it should be in a naturalistic play) but pacing, tone, the stage
picture of a given moment…all are perfectly balanced.
I’m
not sure a play this intimate, small and short (90 minutes, no ‘mish) belongs
on Broadway anymore, not where the consumer is concerned, because ticket prices
have become so insane. But at least this one offers some cathartic reward for
the investment.
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