HOSPICE and
TWELVE ANGRY MEN
Alice is the divorced wife of a charismatic civil rights leader, a woman who ran out on her husband and daughter more than 20 years before. She fled to Paris, where she established a reputation as an expatriate poet and something of a bon vivant. Left behind with her father, Jenny has nurtured fantasies about her mother’s life and sees this homecoming as a way to rediscover her mother, connect with her, and perhaps experience her energy.
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The humor in Terry’s Calm Down Mother, which follows Hospice, serves as an antidote of sorts. This series of connected sketches about women, their roles and relationships, is directed by Touchstone artistic associate Sandra Grand and features solid ensemble work from Julie Massey, Linda Moss, and Farrel Wilson.
Knowing the outcome won’t ruin the play, because the drama doesn’t depend on that. The interest lies instead in the eighth juror’s moral arguments, in the questions of probability he raises, and in the way each juror is brought to examine his own reasoning and his own morality.
