With wit and candor and just the slightest change in his voice, writer and actor Jeffrey Solomon has created a one-man performance piece that will make you laugh, cry, and wish that Mindy Levy was your mother. MotherSON is the kind of theater that a gay son ( or lesbian daughter ) can feel comfortable about taking their mother ( or father to ) for a heartwarming bonding experience.
Conveyed through a series of phone calls and answering machine messages, the story of Mindy and her gay son Brad is played out by Solomon using very few props ( some cordless telephones, a purse, and a rainbow flag, to name a few ) , and a whole lot of facial and vocal expressions. Mindy watches too much television and is constantly calling Brad to tell him about what she saw—from the Home Shopping Network to PBS. She arranges dates for Brad from 3,000 miles away. Brad is trying to live his life, meet a man, fall in love, and live happily ever after.
The turning point occurs when Brad finally convinces Mindy to go to a PFLAG meeting. It is in this revealing scene that the audience sees the total embodiment of the character of Mindy. Solomon makes her funny and sad, and so real you can almost smell her hairspray.
Brad becomes flesh in the scenes when his boyfriend is dying in the hospital, as if the character was a piece of clothing that Solomon grew into for a perfect fit. When Brad calls his mother to thank her for planting a tree in Israel in the name of his dead lover, you could hear people in the audience sniffling.
There are plenty more tears where that came from. There is also an abundance of good humor that is as natural as the way a mother talks to her son and vice versa. By the time Mindy takes a ride on the back of a motorcycle at the Stonewall 25 Parade, she feels like your own flesh and blood. MotherSON made its point long before it was over, and perhaps could have been trimmed by 10 minutes. However, being in the theater with this loving, and dueling, mother and son was like being at a family event that you dread until you arrive and realize that blood really is thicker than water, or tears.
"A-" Bailiwick Repertory, ( 773 ) 883-1090, thru July 2.