Theatre in Review: Mothers and Sons (Golden Theatre)

	Frederick Weller, Tyne Daly. Photo: Joan Marcus

Tyne Daly has mastered the art of revealing exactly what she is thinking while remaining thoroughly poker-faced. It's a skill that she puts to excellent use in Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons, as Katharine Gerard, a widow from Texas with a conventional turn of mind and a distinctly chilly manner. At the moment, she is facing a brave new world in which men can legally marry each other, raise children, and -- more to the point -- live contented, everyday lives.

Katharine has shown up, unannounced, at the Upper West Side apartment of her late son's lover, and, watching him and his husband romping affectionately with their young son, her face is an opaque mask dominated by a half-smile -- but you can see the confusion in her eyes. Left alone to root through a box of old photos, many of her son, Andre, who died of AIDS 20 years earlier, she radiates an array of conflicting emotions -- affection, sorrow, rage -- even as her expression remains remarkably still. We soon realize that she is holding on to her composure by her fingernails.

When Cal, her host, abruptly steps out of the room to retrieve a poster from a theatre production in which Andre starred, she cries out, "Where are you going?", the barely concealed panic in her voice signaling the turbulence within. Trying and failing to find a way to formulate a simple question -- Is Cal or his husband, Will, the biological father of their boy, Bud? -- she is forced to concede, "Everything I say is inappropriate." (Will, who isn't too happy about Katharine's sudden appearance, gently notes she is merely uninformed, soothing and stinging her in a single line.) And when she can contain herself no longer, when her coolly polite façade cracks apart, Katharine's anger is red-hot: "I don't know what I'm supposed to think or feel anymore," she says. "I'm confused, I'm frightened, I'm angry about almost everything." Pointing at a piece of furniture, she adds, "I could let that ottoman put me in a rage."

You might think that the losses of her husband and son have left Katharine isolated, but, as she admits, she has been profoundly alone all her life. Born into a lower-middle-class existence in Port Chester, New York -- for years, she has pretended that she came from the much tonier, adjacent town of Rye -- she married at the first opportunity and found herself living, wealthily but uncomfortably, in Dallas. ("I never got used to being addressed as 'Sugar' by the checkout girl, black or white," she notes.) She felt further trapped in a marriage to a man she didn't really love. "He was unlovable," she says. "Some people are, you know," almost, if not quite, implying that she may be one of them. Katharine's one great hope was Andre, her beautiful, sensitive boy, but even there she felt a distance that could never be breached and which was only made deeper when he escaped to New York at the age of 18. "As a young gay man, he didn't feel comfortable where he was," says Cal. "Andre wasn't gay when he came to New York," she snaps, quickly, before she has a chance to realize the absurdity of the statement.

Katharine and Cal had been introduced a couple of decades back in a television film, Andre's Mother, which takes place during Andre's memorial service in Central Park. That day, the heartbroken Cal begged to be held, but Katharine couldn't get beyond her ice-cold fury. All these years later, Katharine has reappeared, ostensibly to give Cal a copy of Andre's diary -- a gift he doesn't want -- but really she is there to settle unfinished business. Having been unable to reach out to Andre during his time of happiness and, later, when he was dying horribly, she is frozen in time, unable to move beyond his death. And she is thoroughly galled to see that Cal has made a new family for himself, one that, clearly, she sees as a mockery of her own marriage and motherhood.

Not a great deal happens in Mothers and Sons, and at times the characters have a slight tendency toward speechmaking, especially when taking note of the changes to the gay community over the last quarter century. But Katharine is a fascinatingly troubled woman -- bitter, self-critical, clinging to her old-fashioned manners as way of fending off anyone who might come too close -- and over the course of 100 minutes her psyche is stripped bare. McNally has an uncanny insight into how evasions, secrets, and lies poisoned the relationship of Katharine and Andre -- and, by extension, so many other parents and children of their era. At the same time, the marriage of Cal and Will is a sign of a world moving forward; Mothers and Sons is, in my experience, the first play to acknowledge how, for so many gay men, the focus has shifted toward conventional marriage and family life. It is also a multigenerational portrait: Katharine sees homosexuality as a disaster that destroyed her family. Cal, having survived the plague years, has struggled for decades to be comfortable in his own skin. Will, who is 15 years younger than Cal, always assumed he would marry and have children. And the only reality little Bud has ever known is life with two male parents.

There are many well-observed moments in Sheryl Kaller's production, not least when Katharine deftly deflects Will's attempt to shake her hand, or when Katharine, emptied of her rage, accepts an offered Oreo from Bud like a naughty little girl. Frederick Weller is exceptionally fine as Cal, explaining amusingly how he originally stumbled on the word "husband;" when he reminds Katharine that the Andre she idealized had been unfaithful to him; and, finally, when he remorselessly calls her out for her selfishness and insensitivity. ("You held all the cards. He wanted your love all his life, so much he had to pretend he didn't.") Bobby Steggert is appealing as Will, whose natural warmth doesn't preclude him from coldly reminding Katharine that he is Cal's first and only husband, no matter how much Andre may have mattered. As little Bud, Grayson Taylor is adorable, although some work could be done to improve his intelligibility.

And Daly, in a role written for her, is simply stunning, whether she is cracking wise (Going through the box of photos, she says, "A woman. How did you get in here, sweetie?"); nervously ordering a scotch, neat, and jokingly inviting Bud to "tie one on with an old woman;" or, sparing herself nothing, baring the shameful secret she has never before told, of the day that, in her view, she failed her son, once and for all. If Katharine is a monster, she is an unusually gallant and self-aware one, and for all the pain she has caused, she has suffered equally.

The production also enjoys the benefit of John Lee Beatty's picture-perfect Upper West Side apartment set, which is burnished by Jeff Croiter's meticulously detailed lighting, which suggests the fading sunlight of a late winter afternoon. Jess Goldstein's costumes, from the mink coat Katharine doesn't want to take off to the subtle details that reveal the age difference between Cal and Will, are pretty much ideal. Nevin Steinberg's sound design includes a handful of naturalistic effects and an aria from Il re pastore, a Mozart opera referred to in the text.

I've sometimes heard McNally accused of being too sentimental or too much of a boulevard playwright, and I suppose that, given his particular knack for bitchily amusing wisecracks and big emotional scenes, there is some superficial truth to that. But underneath the surface of Mothers and Sons is the terrible insight that no matter how devastating one's losses are, one has no choice but to move ahead, and if happiness requires a certain ruthlessness, then so be it. As long as you are alive, that is the one and only option. As the play reaches its unresolved ending, it is just barely possible that Katharine is beginning to understand that.--David Barbour