Hearing the audience roar with laughter at The MOMologues on the evening I saw the performance, you might have thought that the play must be brilliantly witty. But you'd be wrong: what the (mostly) women watching this Stageworks show were clearly laughing at was the accuracy of its many descriptions of the motherhood experience, from the absurdity of fertility treatments to the shock of bearing twins. Again and again, in this earnest, honest, but not very inventive show, the four women on stage recall some typical mother-moment — say, judging strangers at playgrounds, or tricking a garrulous child into shutting its trap — and the grateful audience explodes, as if finally someone is admitting that the Hallmark card version of mothering isn't the only story.
As the father of a small son, I too recognized maybe 20 relevant moments out of the 200 or so that The MOMologues presents, but I didn't want to shout when I heard them; I just thought, well, how about that, so my experience is not so unique. But I seemed to be in the minority; the audience I saw the play with lustily cheered each recognizable milestone as if the cat were finally, blessedly out of the bag. So here's my recommendation: If you're a mother and you want validation of your experiences — especially the awkward, embarrassing or guilty ones — this is your show. But don't expect anything you didn't know.
The strategy of the play (by Lisa Rafferty, Stefanie Cloutier and Sheila Eppolito) is to present four women — Stephanie (Jeni Bond), Maria (Rosemary Orlando), Charlotte (Susan Karsnick) and Ellen (L'Tanya Van Hamersveld) — and to allow them to reminisce about their experiences as wannabe mothers, pregnant mothers, postpartum mothers, lactating mothers, exhausted mothers… the gamut. Sometimes the women admit to sharing an experience — for example, the agonies of pregnancy — and sometimes they disagree about the quality of an event — say, the discomforts of breastfeeding.
All four actresses are superb, and Karla Hartley's direction is, as usual, suffused with emotional honesty. On the not very attractive, uncredited set — a raised oval platform, some metal stools, a table and chairs, and a park bench — she has the women address us directly at times, and at other times share wine, or do calisthenics, or venture into the audience. In general one might say that Stephanie is the tender one, Maria the most wry, Charlotte the most enthusiastic, and Ellen the one most conscious of life's ironies. And they're all glad to be mothers, whatever the perils. As they say in several, unarguably honest ways, it's probably the most important thing they've ever done.
But is honesty enough? Here's a typical line, this one from a pregnant woman complaining about her growing size: "I'm gaining more weight than I ever thought possible. I've always had a high and low weight number in my head. The dream weight that I'll never be again, and the nightmare weight number that, as I approach, I head straight for Jenny Craig." Recognize yourself? Roaring in approval yet? If not — if the language strikes you as rather pedestrian — you're absolutely right.
But the whole play is like that: no mothering experience left unturned, and not a bit of art in sight. This is theater as group therapy, and the weird thing is, it seems to work.
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2011.