Conversations with Mother

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Matthew Lombardo’s reputedly semi-autobiographical two-hander Conversations with Mother is a delightful light comedy on serious subjects: the 60-year relationship between Maria Collavechio, an Italian American mother from Connecticut, and Bobby, her gay son who wants to come to New York to be a playwright. In the hands of veteran actress Caroline Aaron (best known these day as Shirley Maisel, Miriam’s overbearing mother-in-law) and Matt Doyle (2024 Tony Award for the role of Jamie, the more than slightly crazed husband to be in the gender-bending revival of Company,) these two characters come alive to the point where we feel we have known them for years. In fact, we spend almost six decades with them in 85 minutes and they make an excellent team.

While the characters do not change much, they roll through the years dealing with the various crises with various levels of success. However, the play is peppered with one liners and zingers that make this one of the most entertaining plays this season. Under the polished direction of Noah Himmelstein, Aaron and Doyle get a great deal of mileage from these jokes, not all of them new, but all of them hilarious.

The play follows Bobby from age eight writing a letter home to inform his mother that he is unhappy at camp, to the cemetery where Maria is buried 58 years later when he is now a senior citizen. Along the way, we hear (mostly from phone calls) from Bobby, age 21, about his new job at The Meat Hook, a gay bar in Manhattan, calling home when Bobby age  27 needs money to reimburse his boss after he is caught in a scam, their in-person meeting at Bobby’s New York apartment when he fails to show up for his mother’s 62^nd birthday party after being beaten up by his abusive lover, his ultimately Broadway opening with them sitting side by side (Bobby, age 39), and Bobby’s stint in the Betty Ford Clinic where his mother enjoys the family oriented activities, when she is 74 and he is 47.

Aaron’s Maria plays straight man to Doyle’s Bobby with her malapropisms and mistakes and zingers. When Bobby tells her he has finally gotten a job working nights at a place called The Meat Hook, she asks “What is it? A delicatessen?” Years later when he is still working there, she reports him that she tells her friends he works at a delicatessen so he better be up on his meats. When Bobby admits he finally broke up with his abusive boyfriend who wanted an open relationship, she questions, “What’s that? You don’t close the doors in your apartment?” Her advice is always very wise. When he relates that he ran into his ex-boyfriend on the same side of the steet and they started seeing each other again, she retorts that he should “have crossed the street maybe?!” When he complains that he has not had great luck with guys, with her tough love she reminds him: “Newsflash, Bobby! It ain’t them!”

Wilson Chin’s minimal set is backed by Caite Hevner’s occasional projections which always state the year and pertinent quotes from Maria for each scene. The set design (which initially looks like an elegant drawing room with only two chairs) uses furniture like a bar and a table that are easily pushed out from the wings for individual scenes. The walls hide lockers from which the actors occasional take out clothing while on stage (Ryan Park’s attractive costume design evolves with the decades.) Tom Watson’s wig and hair design allows Aaron’s to age 60 years in the course of the evening. Elizabeth Harper’s lighting design includes colored neon frames for the front and back of the stage which make it look like postcards from the road. The entire design allows for a fluid transition of the play’s 13 scenes.

Not only are Matthew Lombardo’s characters well drawn, real and fully developed, in the hands of Caroline Aaron and Matt Doyle they are lovable and engaging. We learn that in every scene Bobby will get into some trouble that will need his mother’s assistance, from money to advice to understanding to compassion. Not only are they best friends, they are each other’s confidants. Under Noah Himmelstein’s expert direction, the actors make the most of Lombardo’s clever and witty play as the times go by. This is an excellent entertainment for this dark time of year.

Conversations with Mother (through May 11, 2025)

Theater 555, 555 West 42^nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 646-410-2277 or visit http://www.conversationsplay.com

Running time: 85 minutes without an intermission