A Mother, A Daughter and a Gun: Shooting Blanks

There's a warning in the Playbill of A Mother, A Daughter and a Gun: "Gunshots are fired during this performance."

Well, I should hope so. What's that old saying about playwriting? Something about how if somebody takes out a gun during Act I, someone better be firing it by the final curtain? Give the audience what they expect.

Unfortunately there's not a heck of a lot to expect from Barra Grant's pleasant, if somewhat forgettable comedy. Sure, there are plenty of gunshots, most of which are used a punchlines which carry more verbal bang than most of the playwright's dialogue. But what makes the play seem so much better than it really is, is the presence of Veanne Cox.

Cox is one of those actors who excels at getting laughs by playing unusual, quirky types, but even when she's doing a bit right out of the comedy textbook, she never sacrifices believability. She appears here as Jess, a New Yorker who returns home from a day's shopping with a brand new gun. "I could have bought a blouse", she soon explains to her mother, "but I couldn't kill David with a blouse." A pile of limbs supporting a dull and careless expression, her occasional smiles seem to mock themselves.

Mom, named Beatrice, comes in the form of Olympia Dukakis, a familiar portrayal of a loving, but domineering lady who always knows what's best. She doesn't seem overly shocked that her daughter has purchased her first deadly weapon with the intention of killing her cheating husband. No, the more urgent matter is that Jess isn't dressed for the party.

The party... okay, let me get this straight. Jess won an enormous ham as a prize at the market, big enough to feed twenty people. So she impulsively invited twenty strangers to come to a party at her apartment. And mom thinks it's a good idea because it'll give her a chance to make new friends. Okay, it's a bit contrived but coming from Cox I can go with it. Especially when an unexpected guest from her past tempts her to arise from her bed, where she's been hiding beneath a pile of coats, and show at bit of girlish tenderness.

Other guests pop in and out, all adding up to something which I think the author intended to be a plot. The most welcome of them is the always delightful George S. Irving (celebrating his 83rd birthday on opening night) who plays Jess' father with his usual combination of authority, warmth and energetic comic expertise.

There's a handful of good chuckles in director Jonathan Lynn's production and rarely does a great deal of time go by without something amusing being said, but I get the impression Grant was going for some satirical message that never really surfaces. Nearly forty years ago Jules Feiffer's dark comedy Little Murders depicted a New York City where violent crime was so commonplace that nobody noticed continual gunshots and calls for help just outside their apartment windows. But while numerous gunshots careen throughout A Mother, A Daughter and a Gun you just sit there wondering why nobody ever flicks out their cell phone and calls 911.

 

Photos by Carol Rosegg: Top: Veanne Cox and Olympia Dukakis
Center: Veanne Cox
Bottom: Veanne Cox and George S. Irving

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