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 if you want not just a mirror but a lamp when you attend the theater, don’t expect that you’ll find one here. The MOMologues says a lot — but nothing 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...all the way up to feeling-dreadfully-alone-as-they-watch-their-children-board-a-school-bus-for-the-first-time mothers. 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. I admit that I couldn’t clearly distinguish one character from the next (apart from their different confessions), but 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 pregnant woman complaining about her growing size: “I’m gaining more weight that 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?
Or here’s a mother of multiple children: “With our first child, my husband and I were over the edge with paranoia. I stuck the baby monitor right next to his face and one night he gets the hiccups — oh no! So my husband and I get up at three a.m., and each grabbed baby books for advice on the hiccups. Two masters’ degrees between us, so we figure the answer must be in a book, right? But of course there is no answer: they were the hiccups!”
These are not unusual examples, and if they strike 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. At least, that’s how I interpret the booming crowd that I sat among.
So: mothers of the world: The MOMologues feels your pain. Come and be cleansed by one catharsis after the next.
Or else stay home — and never, ever learn just how typical you are.
