Theatre in Review: The Good Mother (New Group/Theatre Row)

	Mark Blum and Gretchen Mol. Photo: Monique Carboni

In the heavy irony department, the title of The Good Mother pretty much takes the cake, since we spend the entirety of Francine Volpe's drama watching the title character skidding down a slippery slope to disaster. The 33-year-old Larissa, a single mother, has a personality entirely stitched together out of loose nerve endings; she's also the queen of TMI, rattling on, in totally random fashion, about the awfulness of the '80s, her daughter's terrible allergies, her decision to forgo college for self-employment as a bookkeeper, and her friend Judy's drug addiction. Preparing for a date that will clearly be a one-night stand, she says, "Sometimes people just need to be touched. Do you know? Beyond wanting a normal adult relationship or a normal adult life there are -- especially when it's been... so long... since. It's a human need. I gotta find my keys."

All of this information is delivered to Angus, her 18-year-old babysitter, who, with his Barnabas Collins hair, deathly white pallor, and all-black wardrobe, looks like he was drawn by Edward Gorey. He maintains a flat affect through all of the above, but Larissa's lack of boundaries becomes really noticeable when she returns home with Jonathan, a beefy trucker, in tow. They repair to the couch to have sex, forgetting about the upstairs presence of Angus and Larissa's daughter, Allyson. By the way, Allyson is autistic, with severe food allergies. Also, the house is freezing because Larissa forgot to pay the heating bill.

The next day, however, Larissa, her manner changed, summons Angus, speaking to him almost entirely in euphemisms. "Were there any events?" she asks about the previous night, warning the baffled youth, "Allyson has expressed to me that something happened." (Allyson, doesn't speak; what she expressed, and how she expressed it, remains unclear throughout.) You won't be surprised to hear that this interview ends in fury and wild accusations.

But wait -- we're just getting started. Larissa's bizarre encounters with Angus constitute only one small piece of a much larger, and uglier, puzzle. Next up is Joel, Angus' father, an alcoholic youth counselor -- Larissa was his client in her adolescence -- who is currently the center of a budding pedophile scandal. Joel swears his innocence, but, as Volpe makes hair-raisingly clear, his admittedly non-physical relationship with Larissa couldn't have been more twisted: As part of his "spiritual journey," he freely admits to treating her inappropriately as a peer, then dropping her. And he is still steamed about the days, years before, when Larissa and Judy accompanied him to a country fair: For one thing, they didn't reimburse him for the tickets; for another, Larissa ran off and fooled around with a carny worker. Joel knows all about it, having spied on the Larissa and the boy in action.

The Good Mother is billed as a psychological thriller, but it is really a study of a female train wreck and the equally damaged men who get caught up in her orbit. The besotted Jonathan returns, having abandoned his trucking route and put his job on the line, to answer Larissa's call for distress, only to find himself casually dismissed. There's also Buddy, her high-school boyfriend, now a cop; despite his marriage, he still angrily carries a torch for her. She turns to him in a panic, as the threats against her mount; as it happens, she is equally terrified of the law, for good reason. Like all of her encounters, it ends in stalemate -- although it's easy to marvel at Larissa's ability to keep all these mixed-up men on the hook. It's a good thing that The Good Mother was written by a woman; a male playwright would have been pilloried for his misogyny.

There's no pretending that The Good Mother is anything but a mess. Its larger drama, in which Larissa's accusations ensnare her in a web of her own making, is left unattended while Volpe lingers over the details of Larissa's astoundingly sick relationships; the ending is especially abrupt. Scott Elliott's direction is lackadaisical at times -- and, of course, one suspects many theatregoers won't be able to bear five minutes, let alone an hour and a half, with this prize collection of basket cases. But if the play fails to satisfy, scene by scene it can exert an undeniable, if malicious, fascination. This is especially true in the scene dominated by Mark Blum's Joel, an indelible picture of a middle-aged ruin, undone by his own desires and ravaged by self-loathing. His evident obsession with Larissa -- at the expense of his attention for his wife and son -- and his apparent inability to stay out of trouble are only two of his monstrous characteristics; even worse is his use of therapeutic language to justify his behavior. ("I think that you wanted to test me to ensure that I will still parent you," he asserts, in one particularly skin-crawling moment.) Gretchen Mol, whose Larissa is a whirlwind of emotions that are deeply held, if only for a few seconds, gives as good as she gets; in her most shockingly cruel act, she produces a bottle of whiskey, innocently claiming that she wants a drink and knowing full well what will happen next.

Equally gripping is Larissa's scene with Buddy, whose furious desire for her burns brightly, even as he pokes king-sized holes in her case. Alfredo Narciso effectively portrays him as a powder keg of frustration. And there is fine work from Darren Goldstein as Jonathan, the trucker who, pathetically, wants Larissa to know that he once planned on being an artist, and Eric Nelsen, as the all-too-easily manipulated Angus. Elliott has obtained strikingly detailed work from each member of the cast.

The production design is equally apt. Derek McLane's living room setting -- with its varnish-stained pine walls and children's toys scattered everywhere -- is an attractive piece of work, until you notice the beams overhead, which reach out, in a vaguely threatening manner, almost past the proscenium, as if to pull us into the maelstrom of Larissa's life. Jason Lyons' lighting features some unsettling fades to black, seemingly cutting off scenes in the middle; it's a clever strategy that adds to the mounting tension. Cynthia Rowley's costumes and Bart Fasbender's sound are equally solid.

The Good Mother is easily one of the strangest plays I've seen all season. It's rather like picking up a rock to see what lives underneath. It's a nasty piece of goods, but don't be surprised if, at times, you find yourself caught by its cobra-like stare.--David Barbour