Our Mother’s Brief Affair begins with Linda Lavin in a mother’s deathbed confession to her grown gay twin children, but by the end two hours later playwright Richard Greenberg has sprung several surprises. The biggest surprise is how much the play feels like a first draft for a better play…or notes for several other plays.
Lavin, more or less reprising the role of the flinty Jewish mother that she has perfected in such serious comedies as Nicky Silver’s The Lyons, portrays Anna Cantor, as seen by her less-than-adored children Seth (Greg Keller), an obituary writer, and his twin sister Abby (Kate Arrington), a librarian.
“Who was she?” Seth asks in the first line of the play, as Anna sits on a park bench. So, it is to be a memory play, and perhaps a mystery. But, as it turns out, the memories are all suspect.
Full review at DC Theatre Scene
Click on any of the photographs by Joan Marcus to see them enlarged
