PHANTASIE
For 30 years D has been content to love and be loved by her adopted mother, Leah. If she thought about her birth mother, it was to conjure up some fantasy figure, Myrna Loy or a hillbilly or a renegade Rothschild or even Lassie.
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But make-believe goes only so far. Now married to Michael Cruz, a loving 35-year-old writer, D will soon have a baby: this new life triggers in D a yearning to close the circle, to meet the woman who gave her up for adoption. D can’t take on a mother’s responsibility until she knows why her birth mother failed at the same task. How, D wonders, can she succeed where this intimate stranger did not?
After D has been deserted a second time by Valerie (who leaves for Australia), D fantasizes that Leah shows up at Valerie’s house. There D and Leah have the talk they always needed to have: Leah speaks of her life as a Polish Jew in a new country, and D learns how much better she fits into Leah’s life than Valerie’s. She finally belongs. When D sees Leah again, they embrace: it’s as if they’d had that breakthrough conversation.
Unfortunately, D’s apostrophes to the audience get cute, and Goss is too chirpy for a woman on mission. In contrast, Janice Saint John plays Valerie with a brusque efficiency that explains all too much about this unfinished mother.
