Mother Play
1hr 30min, no intermission
Mother Play - 2024 Broadway History , Info & More
Hayes Theatre (Broadway)
240 West 44th St. New York, NY
Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) has written a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.
It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis (Jessica Lange) is supervising her teenage children, Carl (Jim Parsons) and Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger), as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them. Blending flares of imaginative theatricality, surreal farce, and deep tenderness, this beautiful roller coaster ride reveals timeless truths of love, family, and forgiveness.
Mother Play - 2024 - Broadway Cast
FEATURED REVIEWS FOR Mother Play
Mother Play
9 / 10
Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are very good indeed in Mother Play, but there’s no question to whom it belongs. Lange is magnificent, especially in this production’s most moving scene: a long passage that the script calls the Phyllis Ballet. Phyllis is alone onstage, because she has pushed everyone away. There is no dialogue, because she has no one to talk to. She stares out motionless at the audience for a discomfiting amount of time, letting us project onto her face like an actress in a film; then, in a silky magenta robe, she enacts a kind of sad silent comedy, setting a dignified dinner for herself and dousing her food in hot sauce. She has fallen down the well of loneliness. Bringing decades of experience to bear, Lange is riveting—and so, by extension, is Phyllis.
MOTHER PLAY: A MEMORY PLAY, PLUS COCKROACHES
7 / 10
Under the direction of Tina Landau, Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are predictably fine in their roles, even if they’re not being stretched much. But it’s Lange who commands the evening, displaying the sort of star power and stage command that make her a Broadway diva. Just the sight of her in various outfits, including ‘60s-era hippie denim, is a pleasure, and it’s worth the price of admission to see her launch into disco dancing (the audience, predictably, goes wild). She’s even given a lengthy silent, solo interlude in which she listens to music, has a drink, smokes, and attempts to eat a frozen meal that’s made no less unpalatable by generous doses of hot sauce. Other than conveying the character’s loneliness in her older years, the scene doesn’t have much reason for being. But as brilliantly played by Lange, it’s an acting lesson that every budding thespian should study.
Mother Play History
Other Productions of Mother Play
| 2024 | Broadway |
Second Stage Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Mother Play - 2024 Broadway Awards and Nominations
| Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Performance in a Play | Celia Keenan-Bolger |
| 2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play | Jessica Lange |
| 2024 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Play | Paula Vogel |
| 2024 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance | Jessica Lange |
| 2024 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance | Jim Parsons |
| 2024 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Play | Mother Play |
| 2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Play | Celia Keenan-Bolger |
| 2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Performer in a Broadway Play | Jim Parsons |
| 2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Play | Jessica Lange |
| 2024 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Play | Paula Vogel |
| 2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play | Jim Parsons |
| 2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Celia Keenan-Bolger |
| 2024 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Jessica Lange |
| 2024 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Paula Vogel |
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