Jessica Lange plays the matriarch in Paula Vogel’s autobiographical new work, subtitled “A Play in Five Evictions.”
NEW YORK — Playwright Paula Vogel has written a deeply personal play about life with one’s mother, and her late mom, Phyllis Rita, would surely have been delighted to have her Broadway appearance played by no less than Jessica Lange, an actress fully capable of turning her into a boozy but sympathetic hybrid of Mama Rose in “Gypsy,” Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest” and Tennessee Williams’ Amanda Wingfield.
Fans of Vogel’s dark comedies across the years have met the lovably witty and sophisticated Carl before in “The Baltimore Waltz,” another personal Vogel piece that chronicled his death from AIDS in 1988, devastating his adoring sister. But in this most recent play, Vogel dives deeper into Carl’s impact on the artist as a young person, the way he functioned as a surrogate parent keeping Martha alive even as Phyllis spiraled from one problem to another, some of her own making, some not at all.
I don’t think the “five evictions” set-up fully works, especially toward the end, and you never fully grasp all of the relevant personal and economic circumstances of this struggling family, seen through a glass darkly, as it were.
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