The Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions is a funny-sweet-bitter reflection of playwright Paula Vogel’s emotional journey with her mother, named in the play’s world as Phyllis Herman (the always watchable Kate Eastwood Norris). The “evictions” of the title refer to the series of house moves undertaken by the Herman family—mother, son Carl (the surprising Stanley Bahorek) and daughter Martha (steady Zoe Mann)—gradually stepping up from a cockroach-riddled basement custodial flat* to a spacious three-bedroom apartment, all in the D.C. metro area. As Martha says early in the play, there is a season for packing, and a season for unpacking.
It’s not clear in the text whether each change of domicile is entailed by formal proceedings, but that’s not important. Rather, we can read each eviction as a point in the Herman’s lives when something is lost, and maybe something found. As the various Herman family apartments gradually become airier and more spacious, equally so the living rooms become emptier of furniture, highlighting Phyllis’s rejection of her children and general isolation. The Gershwins’ “Someone to Watch over Me” recurs as underscoring: Phyllis never does find that Someone until the closing moments of the play.
Shawn Boyle’s projection designs are formidable, perhaps even triggering.
- The Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions, by Paula Vogel, directed by Margot Bordelon, Studio Theatre Mead Theatre, Washington
*Writing as someone who’s lived with cockroaches in Prince George’s County, I’m of the mind that you’re never really rid of them.