MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS
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Mothers and Daughters, directed by the women of the Piven family, showcases writing by Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, Lorrie Moore, and Liliana Hecker. Joyce and Shira Piven have used an innovative style of “story theater” to keep every word faithful to the authors and yet still produce some powerful drama. They’ve treated the text in an almost musical style–letting the characters perform in loose choruses, and emphasizing certain refrains–while blocking with an elaborate, almost danceable choreography.
This works best in Moore’s “What Is Seized,” a dark portrait of a mother’s descent into lunacy as seen through the eyes of her daughter. Shira Piven lets Tria Smith tell the daughter’s story, using still-life poses by Smith and Adele Robbins, who plays the mother exquisitely, to represent photographs that spark the daughter’s memories of her mother. Smith and Robbins almost dance; their touch is intimate, often painful, and infinitely believable. These women love each other, and Shira Piven shows us both the strength and the fragility of that love. Thom Vernon, who plays the father, is also convincing in his peripheral role of a man who is both cold and almost magically charming. Vernon’s at once fanciful and abruptly violent moves let the audience see–rather than merely be told about–the complex nature of the character.
Perhaps the most devastating performance of the evening belongs to Marilyn Dodds Frank, who plays the mother in “The Shawl,” a story about the death of a Jewish baby in a German concentration camp. The story’s tension never lets up, but Dodds never disappoints; every time she’s called to go up one more excruciating emotional notch, she does so flawlessly. Her tour de force comes at the end of the first half of the show, making it almost impossible to concentrate on the second. Thank god for intermission.
