Reviewed
by Judy Richter
April may have been the cruelest month to poet T.S. Eliot, but to two of the characters in John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect, it's August. That's when all the psychotherapists in New York go on vacation, according to this 1979 comedy being staged by Aurora Theatre Company. Feeling abandoned by their revered Dr. James, two psychoanalysis patients, Scooper (Cassidy Brown) and Deirdre (Beth Wilmurt), are left to their own devices.
A
sizable portion of Act 1 is devoted to their initial rendezvous in Deirdre's
apartment after encountering each other at a bookstore. Besides having the same
analyst, they share a love of books, a passion that veers into the sexual. The
fact that they're both neurotic leads them through a roller-coaster of emotions
that lands them in the hospital by Act 2 (fight direction by Marty Pistone.
Further
complicating Scooper's life is his 83-year-old, blind, somewhat demented
mother, Henny (Joan Mankin). She opens and closes the play, first talking with the
frazzled Scooper as he realizes she has been trying to treat her breast cancer
with Kotex and a plastic statue of St. Jude. She has other ailments that send
her into the hospital, too. She ends the play by relating an incident from
Scooper's childhood that might explain some of his problems, but he has left
her alone to tell her story.
Guare
being Guare, author of the absurdist The House of Blue Leaves, the play is loaded with
hilarious moments that all three actors carry off well, thanks to their own
skills as well as Joy Carlin's sharp direction. They're also assisted by Fumiko
Bielefeldt's
costumes, J.B. Wilson's set, Jon Retsky's lighting and Chris Houston's sound. Mankin is especially
memorable as Henny, the daft but still caring matriarch. Brown as the somewhat
nerdy Scooper and Wilmurt as the attractive but mercurial Deirdre are well
matched in this production.
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