BY SCOTT STIFFLER | It’s easy to enjoy — but hard to believe — the central character in a flashback-heavy tale of a mother’s confession and the unsettling ripple effect it has on her surviving children. If only that assessment didn’t apply to the play, “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” as well.
During one of many “cry wolf” calls to her deathbed, Anna (Linda Lavin) — a stubbornly tart husk of the shag rug-loving, Burberry trench coat-wearing, Mary Higgins Clark-reading Long Island mother she was in her prime — lets loose with a doozy, telling grown-up gay son Seth (Greg Keller) about the affair she had when he was 15.
But are her tales of park bench flirtations and hotel room trysts (engaged in while a youthful Seth took weekly viola lessons at Juilliard) the product of a dying truth-teller, a victim of “mental mayhem natural to someone who’d had too many operations, and way too much anesthesia,” or a vain revisionist gunning for space in the competitive obituary page her son writes?
After just over two hours’ worth of anecdotes told, dots connected, and observations made, Seth and his twin sister Abby (Kate Arrington) — still no closer to an answer they can live with — are reduced to wondering, “… who are you?”
Despite its finely calibrated, audience-pleasing quips and volleys (and there are many), Tony-winning writer Richard Greenberg’s layered, but ultimately wafer-thin play sends you on your way with the feeling of having been cheated out of an investment — not in time spent, but in characters ill-served by one too many plot twists that tantalize, then fail to deliver.
Full of juicy details that force a reassessment of the parent they only thought they knew, Anna’s brief affair is grist enough for her befuddled children. However, the even more disturbing revelation that caps Act I plays itself out as little more than a feat of parlor trick misdirection, as does a “Rosebud” moment from Anna’s childhood.
That origin story, though, is beautifully written and wrenchingly played — and if this single callous act seems incapable of causing Anna to proclaim, “I wasn’t worthy of the good things,” only to make those around her suffer for decades, then something must have done the job. How else to explain the deceased father’s only appearance? (“Everybody with their ‘oh mom’s so sick, mom’s so frail’ — she’ll live forever; one day I’ll drop down dead,” he says.)
Recalling what a lousy patient she was during those rounds of getting sick and getting well, Abe (John Procaccino, also cast as Anna’s lover) musters a level of rage so genuine and insightful that it makes the endless comedic observations of Seth and Abby seem as if they belong in a separate, far less important, universe.
Not helping matters: The brother and sister deliver their pithy quips directly to the audience. It’s not long before this has the unfortunate effect of turning the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre into a downscale basement comedy club, where cascades of laughter, although well-earned, distract from the business of drilling deep enough to tap what really lurks below the surface.
Punchline imperative notwithstanding, Greenberg’s knack for heartfelt moments, achieved with stunning bursts of prose, keeps the whole “Affair” from drifting into sitcom territory — making the experience a disappointment only in the sense of potential not realized because of the roads not taken.
As the elusive title character, Linda Lavin has no trouble distinguishing this performance from others in the “formidable parent” genre typical of her recent stage work. So perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to say you can’t quite figure your mother out. Best to show her some love while she’s still around.
OUR MOTHER’S BRIEF AFFAIR | Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St. | Through Mar. 6: Tue.-Wed. at 7 p.m.; Thu.-Sat. at 8 p.m.; Wed.., Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. | $60-$140 at telecharge.com or 212-239-6200
