From one of America's most acclaimed playwrights, 4-time Tony Award winner Terrence McNally comes Mothers and Sons, a powerful new Broadway play that explores the truths of who we are and who we love.
Tony and Emmy Award-winner Tyne Daly stars in Mothers and Sons, a play about a mother who pays a surprise visit to the New York apartment of her late son's ex-partner, who is now married to another man and has a young son. Challenged to face how society has changed around her - without her - she is finally able to see the rich life her son might have led. Strikingly timely and deeply compassionate, Mothers and Sons is about the evolving definition of family and the healing power of forgiveness.
After her debut in 1990 on PBS's 'American Playhouse,' the gorgon mother known as Katharine Gerard is not a character most people would care to revisit, least of all in a full-length Broadway play. But there she is on stage at the Golden Theatre, where Terrence McNally's 'Mothers and Sons' opened Monday, now inhabited by Tyne Daly and acting every bit the human refrigerator that the late Sada Thompson presented in that 1990 episode titled 'Andre's Mother.' Did McNally bring Katharine back just to beat her up again? Maybe. Whatever, this public trashing is a riveting show. Of course, by play's end Katharine has delivered a couple of bombshells that explain her bitterness, if they don't exactly absolve her, and Daly gets some of the evening's biggest laughs without even saying a word.
Tyne Daly isn't in Master Class this year, but she's giving one. And, paradoxically, rule No. 1 is: Give nothing away. As Katharine Gerard in Mothers and Sons, she doesn't clue you in to her intentions, or tease her next moves, or make big faces to indicate her anger at the world: an anger so unrelenting she could 'let that ottoman put me in a rage.' She resists crying and tells no jokes but jerks the most tears from the audience and gets the evening's biggest laughs just by standing or sitting and doing the plainest things. She reaches for a drink to balance her nerves, then doesn't drink it. She fishes reading glasses from her purse before looking through photos of her dead son. She stands within her secondhand fur coat as if it were armor.
2014 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play | Mothers and Sons |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Play | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Tyne Daly |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Susan Dietz |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Jack Thomas |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Peter Stern |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Tom Smedes |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Sanford Robertson |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Brunish-Trinchero |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Roberta Pereira |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Ed Filipowski |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Mark Lee |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Lams Production |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Ken Davenport |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Paul Boskind |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Hunter Arnold |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Loraine Alterman Boyle |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Barbara Freitag |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Debbie Bisno |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Paula Wagner |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Roy Furman |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Tom Kirdahy |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Play | Terrence McNally |
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