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Mama Grizzlies Tear Into Lunch in oh, Honey
In Jeana Scotti’s play, everyone’s got a son facing sexual-misconduct accusations, and the waitperson is taking notes.
“They already talk enough shit about us behind our backs.” This crap is the active minefield that Lu, Bianca (Jamie Ragusa), Vicki (Karo, nailing a specific brand of kinda-all-over-the-place, Aquarius-hippie-mom energy), and Sarah (Mara Stephens) pick their way through every time they meet: the looming, suffocating fact that each one of them has a college-age son who’s been accused of sexual assault. Scotti’s play draws on a 2017 Times article about a real group of mothers in like circumstances who met regularly at a diner in the Twin Cities suburbs to “share notes and commiserate.” It’s a chilling piece, full of eerie demonstrations of the rooms one can wall off within one’s own conscience (“In my generation,” says one of the moms, “what these girls are going through was never considered assault. And, despite the chest-tightening heaviness of oh, Honey ’s material, Scotti and Joenk find plenty theatrical lift — especially in a number of wicked little sequences where “the girls” jump out of context and, atop a cheesy soundtrack and speaking into forks as microphones, perform Real Housewives versions of themselves.
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