By William Wolf

OUR MOTHER'S BRIEF AFFAIR  Send This Review to a Friend

As much as I enjoy watching Linda Lavin, whose performances bring a glow to whomever she portrays, she cannot rescue the dopey play that Richard Greenberg has written. The Manhattan Theatre Club presentation, “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” is a memory drama, with twins, son and daughter, looking back to try to understand their inscrutable mother. The action, directed with a reasonably smooth flow by Lynne Meadow, moves back and forth between time periods, including after their mother has died and also with the siblings addressing the audience directly.

Lavin, with customary expertise, plays Anna, a Jewish mother who has had a miserable marriage and, as she ultimately makes clear, wants to be known as her own woman, not just a as a mother. She came from the lower East Side of New York, graduated to Long Island, and while the sometimes clever Greenberg gives her a way with one-liners, her life has been very undistinguished and she yearns for it to be more significant. But the story that the playwright ultimately has her describe makes her so utterly out of character that the gambit utterly wrecks the play, which isn’t so impressive to begin with.

This is a story with revealed secrets, but I find it impossible to discuss it meaningfully without spilling much of the specifics. So if you plan to see it, I suggest that you stop reading now.

The twins are both gay. The son, Seth, is played by Greg Keller, and his sister, Abby, is portrayed by Kate Arrington. They give competent performances as they banter with each other and their mother in the array of interwoven scenes in simple settings. There comes the moment when they are appalled at their mom’s confession that not only did she have an affair in the 1970s, but that her lover who at first used a false name confessed that his real name was—are you ready?—David Greenglass. Yes, that David Greenglass, who ultimately admitted that in order to save himself and his wife in the famous 1950s conspiracy to commit espionage trial, he gave false testimony about his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, that helped send her to the electric chair, along with her husband, Julius.

Astonished, Seth and Abby face the audience and give a brief informational on the Rosenberg case. They make clear their belief that the execution was a gross injustice apart from any espionage that was committed, and in any event all Ethel is supposed to have done was type notes, about which Greenglass later admitted he lied. As explained to the audience, Ethel was really used by the government as a pawn to get Julius to break down and confess. The playwright may be trying to make a statement about injustice in the case, but having Anna describe the beauty of her affair with Greenglass is as appalling as it is unconvincing.

We may wonder along the way whether she is telling the truth or making up a story so she can be “close to history.” But her describing Greenglass as an appealing, ardent lover is off the wall. In scenes on a park bench John Procaccino, who plays Greenglass with absolute charm, is a far cry from the portrait of him as a self-righteous shlub with face and voice disguised in a 60 Minutes II television interview, and the character depicted in the book, “The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair,” by New York Times writer Sam Roberts, a book which, it turns out, Anna has read.

In the play Anna describes Greenglass as “an urban gentleman” and “a man who had class.” (In real life documents from Greenglass’s lawyer’s files has his wife, Ruth, describing her husband as having had a “tendency to hysteria” who once ran naked though the hallway shouting about “elephants” and “lead pants,” in addition to saying things were so even if they were not and talking of suicide as if he were a character in the movies.) In the play, Greenglass excuses himself as “really a humble guy” and talks of his espionage and his testimony against his sister in pleasant, matter-of fact- tones, and Anna takes pity on him and hugs him with loving forgiveness.

The account also makes Anna seem so absurd, despite the skill lavished on her by Lavin, in her desire to come across as someone with more importance than her role in life. She has considered herself to be a liberal, as have her children, so how could she relate this way to Greenglass when she knows who he is? There is also a confession of her own--a minor slight to her dying younger sister that has haunted her with feelings of guilt, and she speaks of the ultimate revelation of her own secret in the context of Greenglass’s revelation of his secret. At this point Seth has one of the play’s best lines when tells his mother that there is such a thing as scale.

It’s one thing for Anna to want to be close to history, but it is quite another to be on the wrong side of history. And it is yet another for a playwright, however well-intentioned, to come up with such a muddled piece of work. At the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street. Phone: 212-239-6200. Reviewed January 24, 2016.

  

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