Lange, Parsons, Keenan-Bolger Will Lead Paula Vogel's MOTHER PLAY on Broadway

[jacobsnchz14]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:03pm

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Jessica-Lange-Jim-Parsons-Celia-Keenan-Bolger-Will-Lead-Paula-Vogels-MOTHER-PLAY-on-Broadway-20230906

Second Stage Theater (Carole Rothman, President and Artistic Director; Lisa Lawer Post, Interim Executive Director) today announced that Tony Award winner Celia Keenan-Bolger, Academy Award, Emmy Award, and Tony Award winner Jessica Lange, and Emmy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award winner Jim Parsons will star in the world premiere, MOTHER PLAY, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel and directed by Tina Landau.

Part of Second Stage’s 45th Anniversary Season, this limited engagement will begin previews Tuesday, April 2nd and will officially open on Thursday, April 25th, 2024 at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street).

From Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) comes MOTHER PLAY, a bitingly funny and unflinchingly honest new play about the hold our family has over us and the surprises we find when we unpack the past.

It’s 1962, just outside of D.C., and matriarch Phyllis is supervising her teenage children, Carl and Martha, as they move into a new apartment. Phyllis has strong ideas about what her children need to do and be to succeed, and woe be the child who finds their own path. Bolstered by gin and cigarettes, the family endures — or survives — the changing world around them. Blending flares of imaginative theatricality, surreal farce, and deep tenderness, this beautiful rollercoaster ride reveals timeless truths of love, family, and forgiveness.

[BCfitasafiddle]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:07pm

Fantastic!

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:08pm

Holy God. TAKE ALL MY MONEY FOR THIS. 

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:19pm

WOAH! That's quite the get for 2nd Stage. Hopefully it will actually translate to ticket sales unlike some of their other shows recently which were so poorly advertised & sold even with the presence of "stars".

Updated On: 9/6/23 at 01:19 PM

[bigbelterbaby]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:28pm

Hopefully I’m wrong but the synopsis and cast is giving The Glass Managerie redux which has been done so many times. 

[betyourass]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:39pm

Agreed - but this cast is fantastic. Definitely interested in this...

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:42pm

So Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are playing teenagers? That's...a choice. 

[Robbie516]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 1:54pm

This is huge for second stage …good for them

[HogansHero]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 2:24pm

bigbelterbaby said: "Hopefully I’m wrong but the synopsis and cast is giving The Glass Managerie redux which has been done so many times."

Don't worry. (You will be proven wrong.)

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 2:35pm

Broadway61004 said: "So Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are playing teenagers? That's...a choice."

That was my first reaction, but then I remembered how well Vogel was able to play with time and age in How I Learned to Drive.

I'm sure she and Landau have good reason for the casting.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 3:00pm

I'm dead.   This is show my soul was missing, without knowing it existed.   

 

GAH!

[Kad]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 3:35pm

Broadway61004 said: "So Keenan-Bolger and Parsons are playing teenagers? That's...a choice."

Keenan-Bolger’s whole Broadway career at this point is playing kids and young people - and to great effect. Her Tony award was for playing Scout and that was only a few years ago. 

[Melissa25]

Posted: 9/6/23 at 11:30pm

Jessica Lange…be still my heart.

[Synecdoche2]

Posted: 9/7/23 at 12:02am

Certainly Vogel is directly referencing Menagerie in some ways and intends to play on that archetypal dynamic, no? I mean, both Keenan-Bolger and Lange were famously (or in Lange's case in-famously) in Broadway revivals of it.
 

Agreed this looks fantastic!

Updated On: 9/7/23 at 12:02 AM

[RippedMan]

Posted: 9/7/23 at 2:24am

Vogel likes a memory play so I could see this being that. The grown children reflecting on it very The Glass Menagerie. But great casting! Count me in to pay to see this. 

[Robbie516]

Posted: 9/8/23 at 11:37am

Who do you guys think is the bigger draw here…Lange or Parsons?

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 9/8/23 at 12:04pm

Robbie516 said: "Who do you guys think is the bigger draw here…Lange or Parsons?"

Lange. Not only has she been a bigger star longer than Parsons, but her coming back to Broadway is an event. Nothing against Parsons, though.

[WldKingdomHM]

Posted: 9/8/23 at 12:17pm

Well Jessica is the Supreme 

[jagman1062]

Posted: 9/8/23 at 12:49pm

Robbie516 said: "Who do you guys think is the bigger draw here…Lange or Parsons?"

For me, it's definitely Lange. I am of the age that I remember her early work and I've been a fan of hers for years. Although I enjoyed Parsons work on TBBT, I haven't thought his work in other projects was especially remarkable. In fact, I want to see this show more for Keenen-Bolger than Parsons. Parsons gives me pause. It will be interesting, as the production of TGM that starred Lange wasn't very good, but the production that included Keenen-Bolger was very very good. Interesting dynamic.

[JasonC3]

Posted: 10/17/23 at 4:56pm

Given the starry cast, I was pleasantly surprised that tickets are somewhat reasonably priced compared to other shows right now.  $169 for a mid-orchestra center aisle seat early in the run was an easy yes.

[east side story]

Posted: 11/2/23 at 4:47pm

Any promo codes floating around for this one?  

[Melissa25]

Posted: 11/2/23 at 11:39pm

I went with Partial View Orchestra E6,8 for a total of $209.  I’d rather be closer for facial expressions even if I have to miss some stage left entrances/exits. 

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 2/28/24 at 3:31pm

Jessica Lange profile with some vague bits about what Mother Play is about

https://www.vulture.com/article/jessica-lange-in-conversation.html

Tell me about Mother Play, which is built around a series of five evictions and also stars Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger as your kids.
Part of the reason I immediately agreed to do this play, besides being knocked out by it, was the idea of doing a new play. Nobody had ever presented me with that possibility before — to actually create the character. That whole process is fascinating because we’re still making adjustments, which of course you don’t do with Eugene O’Neill! It’s a moveable feast. Also, the idea of playing a character who ages from her 30s to 80 was incredibly interesting because it’s not the same as doing something on film where they put on makeup. When I did the older version of Edith Beale in HBO’s Grey Gardens in 2009, I spent four hours in the morning with people pasting on all these prosthetics to make me look like I was 78 years old or something. How do you bring a character from 30 to 80 onstage? With the spirit or the energy level? And externally, with the voice, the body language?

How do you play somebody in their 30s? Talk faster?
I think there would be a completely different energy to it, and maybe you’d even [she raises the pitch of her voice to make it girlish] move it into a head voice, rather than [throatily, scratchily] drop it way down from years of sorrow.

Are they going to do anything with lighting or sound to convey the passage of time?
Without giving too much away, yeah, there will be cinematic properties to it.

...

I wrote down one of your character’s lines from a draft of Mother Play: “You are twice the man your father was. You, my son, have my blood. You have my balls. Fear nothing. Crush the invaders. Kill, kill, kill.” I thought, Yeah, this is a Jessica Lange part.
I hope I can deliver that properly! I don’t know. But it’s a wonderful play. I think it’s going to be a great challenge. And it’s heartbreaking.

In what way?
That idea that there can be a decision — a wrong decision that comes out of some kind of emotion or misinformation, some misalignment of the stars — and suddenly your life takes a turn and it’s never the same and it’s never right.

Story of my life.
Probably most people’s. And then, in this play, there’s the loss and the haunting and the regret.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 2/28/24 at 3:52pm

Well, the 50 year time span certainly explains Parsons and Keenan-Bolger's casting.  (as the description of the play had listed them as teenagers.)

[TaffyDavenport]

Posted: 3/11/24 at 10:47am