Mothers took center stage in the Broadway season just ended, getting star treatment for characters who range from vile to virtuous. Today, on Mothers Day, Jessica Lange in the title role of Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play” is giving an unforgiving portrait of a woman who coldly rejects her two children, while Rachel McAdams in the title role of Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane” is depicting the intensely devoted mother of a severely disabled son. Both actresses have been nominated for Tony Awards, in the same category (Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play) as two other nominees who play mothers, Sarah Paulson in “Appropriate” as a mother undone by her son, and Betsy Aidem in “Prayer for the French Republic.” as somebody who will do anything to protect hers, including move to another country. Indeed, the only nominee in the category who did not portray a mother is Amy Ryan in “Doubt” — who played a Mother Superior. In that same play, Quincy Tyler Bernstine has been Tony-nominated in a different category for her portrayal of a mother who fights the nun on behalf of her son.
Mothers dominate musicals as well, with both Eden Espinosa in “Lempicka” and Kelli O’Hara in “Days of Wine and Roses” as neglectful mothers to their daughters, and Shoshana Bean in “Hell’s Kitchen” as an overbearing one to hers — at least that’s how her daughter views her most times; the musical’s composer Alicia Keys asks the audience to view this fictionalized version of her own mother more sympathetically. In the song “Seventeen,” the mother, Jersey, complains about her daughter Ali to her friends:
“She’s sassy, kinda nasty, got me feeling batty
…She’s seventeen and her brain just don’t work
Just seventeen
But she acts like a jerk….”
Mothers need not be one-dimensional. Mrs. Walker, the mother of the titular character in The Who’s Tommy , is dedicate to finding a cure for her traumatized child — and was also partly responsible for his traumas.
“Suffs,” a musical about the women who fought for the right to vote, shows Shaina Taub as leading suffragist Alice Paul resisting the traditional roles for women:
Take wife-and-motherhood, put them high, high up on a shelf
If I don’t give my all to my calling, I’ll never forgive myself.
But it’s a mother who saves the day; in the song ““A Letter from Harry’s Mother,” Emily Skinner portrays the real-life figure who convinced her son, a 24-year-old Tennessee state legislator, to cast the deciding vote in the thirty-sixth and final state to ratify the 19th amendment.
In some shows, motherhood looms even in its absence. Dorothy misses her mother in The Wiz; Raleigh is a dragooned substitute mother for the quintet of scary children in “Grey House.” Diana in Stereophonic resists her boyfriend and bandmate Peter’s push to get married and become a mother; Sally Bowles in Cabaret decides she can’t be one.
Every season seems to offer supportive mothers and complicated ones. Here are ten videos by or about mothers in seasons past.
