'night, Mother
Omaha World Herald Review
Published Saturday | ?
By Bob Fischbach
If you think of the performance space as a black box, BroadStreet Theatre's production of "'Night, Mother" has the scenery running diagonally - sunken living room in one corner, kitchen in another, working sink and counter wrapped around a support pillar at midstage.
The audience sits in the two other corners, glimpsing one another across the divide filled by the playing area.
It's as if a house had two facing glass sides.
So detailed and complete are the setpieces, and so natural are the performances, you really do feel like you're eavesdropping on a very private conversation.
And that conversation in Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize-winning play is about suicide - which really means it's about life and what makes it worth living.
Jesse (Mary Carrick), a thirtysomething divorcee who lives with her mother, Thelma (Moira Mangiameli), calmly informs her that, after taking care of a chore list and giving mom a manicure this evening, she will lock herself in her bedroom and put a bullet through her head.
What follows is a lengthy conversation in which Thelma tries to uncover Jesse's reasons for her decision and to, of course, talk her out of them.
They talk about the failed marriage. They talk about Jesse's son, who's in trouble with the law for theft. They talk about Jesse's epilepsy, which seems to be under control.
And all the while, Jesse calmly goes about filling the candy dishes, hauling the garbage, cleaning the fridge, filling mom's pill dispenser - getting everything ready for tomorrow, when she won't be around to take care of these tasks.
Carrick, known to theatergoers for character parts in comedy and musicals, inhabits the role so completely she looks almost like a different person from the moment she steps onstage. It's a controlled performance with dramatic range not seen from her before as she fields her mother's questions and asks a few of her own.
She's patient, she's peeved, she's bemused, she's angry. Mostly, she's just tired.
"It's like getting off the bus," she says at one point. "I've had enough. This is my stop."
Mangiameli gives Thelma the heart of a mother as she runs through her catalog of reasons and tricks to sidetrack Jesse. The middle part of the show, in which she talks about her own marriage and her jealousy of her daughter's closeness to her late husband, strips away a lifelong curtain between the two. They have not been close, yet you sense there is love between them.
But as arguments are batted down, Thelma's moods swing from frustration to resignation, belligerence to panic and terror.
Both actresses give it their considerable all, and the evening teems with moments of insight, connection, alienation and, above all, truth.
Director Todd Brooks has built a solid evening of adult drama, aided and abetted by Liz Kendall's set, Nancy Ross' costumes and Laura Jay's props.
The program offers information and resources related to depression and suicide, and a panel discussion with mental health experts, cast and director will follow the March 11 show.
