The Mother (The Atlantic Theater Company) - Previews

catching it Sunday evening

Ouch.  I hope others will report as well.  

I'm curious about Isabelle Huppert at the stage door - did she sign programs or take photos with anyone?  Also.....did Chris Noth?

I saw the first preview and have to disagree about Huppert. While she does have a thick accent, I did not have many issues with it and thought she was excellent and for at least the first 45 minutes giving quite a diva performance. The "how could you not love this" line comes to mind. 

I actually enjoyed the father, but this play fell short for me. Its uses repetition like the Waverly gallery but we keep seeing the multiple versions of scenes that play out differently. I found the sum of its parts rather frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying. There's a lot to unpack here, affairs, some overt tones of incest, maybe some detention and a crumbling marriage, and depression. That said I don't think any of them are handled very well. 

Overall the reason I tolerated it all was to see Huppert on stage whom I thought was excellent. She's a warm presence and often very funny. That said the evening felt long for 85 minutes!

 

Jmuep2 said: "Any sense of the running length for this?"

Look right above your post.

Saw this tonight and I wonder what it will be like a few weeks when the rhythms are tighter and the chemistry truly gels. In short, my head is still spinning from it, but I loved it.

Spoilers abound (sorry).

If I recall, correctly, this play was written before Zeller's The Father and yet, in some ways it feels like it was written after.

While The Father dealt with Alzheimer's Disease, The Mother is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I think it's safe to assume, the mother, Anne, is suffering from depression and Florian Zeller, the playwright, explores her depression and mental illness in the context of, time, motherhood and perception vs. reality. It's a lot to pack into 90 minutes, but Zeller keeps it interesting, mysterious and moving right along.

The play is like the theatrical version of abstract art. The themes are weighty and require a lot of work from the audience. I'm still sorting it out.

Isabelle Huppert plays the mother, Anne, whose grown children have left, whose husband, despite his physical presence, has left their marriage and whose sense of worth and purpose seem to have left, as well.

In some sense, this could be seen as an indictment of motherhood, but I doubt very much if that's the intent. Instead, it's an indictment of how we treat time, aging and self-worth. As quickly as time passes for Anne, is as much as it has stopped. We repeat scenes again and again with slight variations. Are they really happening? Is it the pills? The liquor? The combination? Or is it just the mental breakdown that comes from a loss of purpose. When, as Anne says, you've been used by everyone in your orbit then disposed of, time marches on but your life has stopped.

Anne's unhealthy obsession with her son and dismissal of her daughter is very telling. On the one hand, smothering her son is a manifestation of her desperate attempt to feel needed and worthwhile. Her daughter, on the other hand, is give short shrift, almost as if Anne has mentally relegated her daughter to a similar fate.

For Anne, the past has flown by, while her present and her future have stopped, in a sort of Groundhog Day repetition. For Anne, life and time have become synonymous, while becoming simultaneously meaningless.

This play may be too much of a downer for some. But, we live in a world where we still seem to have to fight the stigma of mental illness, where we throw old people in a home and call them useless and where we replace the old model of everything with a newer, better, bigger, faster, sexier model of something. And, in the process, people (in this case, Anne) get lost in the shuffle.

Zeller's portrait of this woman's breakdown, as she realizes this will be her existence until her demise, is heartbreaking and heartbreakingly real.

This is not for everyone. But, if you don't mind some heady, thought-provoking theater that makes you do a lot of the work, this is a hauntingly wild ride.

As for the cast, they will get better with time. Huppert is not difficult to understand. Chris Noth is fine and he will grow with this, but this is Huppert's play. I'd love to see how deeply she sinks into this in a few weeks time.

PS: If anyone is going to burn their tickets, obviously, I loved this and would be happy to help you save a match :)