Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions

"Mother Play," though based on Vogel’s own life, is her most schematic, more an outline barely fleshed out with lots of details rather than the intense emotional revelations of her earlier works such as "How I Learned to Drive" and "Indecent." The chronological span of the play precludes anything but a quick portrayal of a procession of life-changing events in the Herman family and the rest of the world.  Only Martha comes close to revealing her inner tumult at being torn between her mother and her brother.  AIDS and other markers of the fast-moving decades are served up too quickly and with foregone conclusions in weak attempts to pluck the audience’s heart strings. [more]