Our Mother’s Brief Affair

Our Mother’s Brief Affair constantly bounces between the present of 2003 and 2006 and the past of 1973 when the affair happened. From the hospital room where Anna is making small talk with her grownup kids and reminiscing about the old times, we are taken to the bench in Central Park where she met her lover and then to the hotel room nearby where she found out about his secret identity.

It’s a very dynamic text. Not only does it shift between reality and memory or fantasy but it also contains intertwining monologues like the one in the beginning, which introduces us to Anna:

Seth: If a photograph was an orgasm of a facial expression she was in a constant pre-orgasmic state…

Anna: I think AC is one of the greatest achievements of western civilization…

(And so on)

The text of the play also contains a scene where the fourth wall is broken and Anna’s kids, Seth and Abby, give us a Wikipedia-like footnote about the secret identity of the lover. This happens toward the end of Act I and as soon as they approach the front of the stage the house light goes on as if this “foot note” is not really part of the play. This felt very confusing and I expected the intermission to begin shortly after Seth and Abby finished, but instead the lights went off and another scene followed.

Because of the tangled narration it made complete sense to build the set as one space.  All three time periods are present on stage: there is a park bench on the right representing the year 1973, and an arm chair with ottoman are being used as a set for the present day. Two chairs and boxes towards the back of the stage are being used in the scene where siblings are preparing the family house for sale. Finally, there is a second bench in the back turned away from us.

The set is relatively minimalistic, yet it feels cluttered. The elements of it don’t go well together. Some of them feel random and distracting like the sports bottle with a straw which Anna sips from while being in the hospital. If you see so few items on stage, you would expect every one of them to be carefully picked.

Three screens help to manage the proportions of the space and make it smaller and cozier. They also provide extra lighting effects, which did not always work. During the scene in the park there were projections of leaf shadows on the screens that looked like a blown up tie-dye T-shirt. But during the scene of packing the house they were the color of cardboard which gave the impression of an old and worn out house better than any words would have been able.                    

Maybe it was the lack of props and set variations but the play felt very static. Maybe it was the lack of compassion for most of the characters. Even though we know some facts about Anna’s kids, even tough they have issues that they reflect upon a little, they never exceeded the role of spectators to their mother’s confession. 

Linda Lavin is brilliant in the role of Anna. Even in the scenes in the hospital where she sits in her armchair covered with a blanket the entire time she manages to keep her performance very dynamic. She does this weird facial expression after addressing her son where her mouth ingratiatingly opens and her tongue bizarrely moves from side to side. This creates a comical effect, which immediately buys her the love of the audience. But at the same time it looks uncanny like the face of a person who can’t quite control their muscles. It almost seems like Anna is trying to seduce her son.

Anna: What are you looking at?

Seth: You.

Anna: That’s not what that’s who. I was waiting for you to look.

At some point she drops this strange grimace but the over all mannerism stays. A diva is forever a diva. It’s a pleasure to watch Linda Lavin performing and for that alone Our Mother’s Brief Affair is worth seeing.