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An Evictable Menagerie: Paula Vogel’s Mother Play
Revisiting her chaotic upbringing with intermittent insight.
David Zinn’s set is full of cardboard moving boxes and what you might call “well loved” furniture, all on wheels so that the actors can roll it around; Lange is introduced with the spin of an Eames chair. Keenan-Bolger’s part is even trickier, requiring her to flit between memory and commentary, and she pulls it off straightforwardly, as she happens to be an expert in the particular field of being an adult playing a child (see To Kill a Mockingbird and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee). In a wonderful, wordless sequence when Phyllis has been abandoned by both Carl and Martha, she putters around an empty apartment, devoid of purpose but retaining the posture of a woman raised to be watched, finding humor and subtle tragedy in the way she slathers hot sauce on a microwaved dinner.
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