Theatre in Review: Our Mother's Brief Affair (Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

	John Procaccino, Linda Lavin. Photo: Joan Marcus

In the early stretches of Our Mother's Brief Affair, I thought, Linda Lavin should be grateful for playwright Richard Greenberg. A little later, I realized I had it backwards. As Anna, an aging and rather frail Long Island housewife who enjoys bedeviling her adult children with bombshells from her past, Lavin commandeers a role that fits her as snugly as the classic Burberry coat that is the character's fondest possession. The survivor of an unhappy marriage and the mother of two (although not possessed of any maternal instinct), she is quickly sketched in by her son, Seth, who, looking back after her death, renders her with an almost disconcerting exactitude. "She said five or six witty things, then repeated them," he says, adding, "She was nostalgic, but not for anything that had ever happened." Also: "She was an average situational liar, but not at all a maker of fables" -- in other words, an ordinary woman who worked very, very hard at being out of the ordinary.

And, of course, Lavin has a ball investigating Anna's batty, supremely self-involved nature, whether adopting a "classy" accent that Seth terms "Flatbush on the Thames," reminiscing about her youth ("The Depression, the war....life was lovely then"), or informing her aggrieved son that she never used a term of endearment for him because, "If your name was 'Seth', you were called 'Seth,' because you can't diminish Seth except by extending it and who's gonna bother with the extra syllable?" Anna's disapproval of Seth gets expressed in various forms of pretzel logic; for example, she's unhappy that he's gay and celibate. "If you're not gonna sleep with anyone anyway, why not be straight?" she wonders. "There are benefits." When he demurs, she adds, "Would it kill you to not sleep with a woman once in a while?" Lavin wraps her stiletto tongue and sardonic smile around these lines, creating a woman who knows she's impossible and loves it.

Then Anna, in the hospital, on "one of her long series of deathbeds," says to Seth, apropos of nothing, "Did I ever tell you about my affair?" The innocence of the line reading -- she might be mentioning something interesting she read in the newspaper the other day -- combined with the slight pause, followed by a mocking, open-mouthed parody of surprise, is patented Linda Lavin. Halfway out the door of life, Anna still has a few surprises to share and she intends to enjoy herself. By now, Seth has been joined by his sister, Abby, fleeing a dying marriage and motherhood in California. Both adult children are bemused, to the say the least, by their mother's news. Seth is particularly nonplussed to learn that the assignations took place on Saturday mornings, right after Anna dropped him off for viola lessons at Juilliard. Then, identifying her lover, Anna drops a name I won't mention here; suffice to say he is one of the most divisive figures in American history of the 1950s, a man who caused widespread revulsion among liberal American Jews -- like Anna.

This is the point where I felt that, if Lavin was giving her considerable all to Greenberg's play, the author wasn't necessarily returning the favor. From here on, Our Mother's Brief Affair is content to spin its wheels, discussing its central conceit at length without moving forward or revealing anything new about the characters. Seth and Abby wrestle with the implications of Anna's story, but nothing much comes of it. We see scenes from the affair, which, even in Anna's telling, isn't all that consequential. And, by the time Greenberg employs another twist, suggesting the possibility that the identity of her lover is a fantasy she dreamed up in a state of mild dementia to allow her to forgive herself for a small crime from her past, it is pretty obvious that Our Mother's Brief Affair is a situation in search of a play, or perhaps the material for a striking short story stretched thin over two full acts. Indeed, given the extensive reliance on direct address, one wonders if this story wouldn't work better as prose fiction.

Perhaps this is all intentional; Our Mother's Brief Affair is a markedly autumnal play -- in Anna's memory, everything always took place in October -- concerned with the evanescence of memory and the transitory nature of love. Anyone who has tended to an aging and/or difficult parent will nod in sympathy as Seth and Abby sift through the evidence of the past, looking for the woman Anna really was. And there is real poignancy in the realization that Anna will die, taking with her so much that can never be recovered.

If Lavin reigns supreme over Lynne Meadow's elegant, handsome production, she is in fine company. Greg Keller's sensitively rendered Seth is a man facing middle age with a full load of compromises and disappointments, without being maudlin about them. He has an especially fine moment when he realizes that Anna drove him not to quit the viola simply because it added another colorful detail to her life. Kate Arrington's Abby has a bit of Anna's oddball gene -- she sometimes reads Holocaust literature to put her ten-month-old to sleep -- but she also delicately handles a rather poignant speech in which she decides that her largely sexless marriage is still a marriage and somehow worth holding on to. John Procaccino is equally fine as Anna's mystery lover and her husband, who appears to deliver an aria of complaints.

The right note of time passing is struck in Santo Loquasto's set, which places a few key pieces of furniture against a series of scrims that have been beautifully burnished by the late-October-afternoon glow of Peter Kaczorowski's lighting. Tom Broecker's costumes have a natural, authentic feel. Fitz Patton's sound design includes some appropriately pensive incidental music.

Our Mother's Brief Affair is middling Greenberg, at best -- better than The Violet Hour and A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, but far short of The American Plan, Three Days of Rain, and The Assembled Parties. Let us hope that the playwright is properly grateful for his star; he may have written her a vehicle, but she makes it seem far better than it is. -- David Barbour