Mother Play
7 / 10
With their underwritten parts, Parsons gives us flamboyance and occasional anger, while Keenan-Bolger mostly serves as our quiet and patient guide. But it is Lange who stands at the center, giving a performance that throughout is full of nuance as she portrays this complicated mess of a woman. At one point, we are even allowed to hope for a genuine change in Phyllis's deeply embedded homophobia. But she is who she is, and even with whatever magical thinking Vogel has applied to her portrait, there is precious little redemption to be found here, except, perhaps, in the lessons that her daughter Martha, presumably the playwright's stand-in, has accrued. And maybe that's the raison d'être for the play itself: understanding and forgiveness.
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