Playwright: Martin McDonagh
At: Actors Workshop Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr
Phone: 773-728-7529; $20-$25
Runs through: July 9
BY RICK REED
Martin McDonagh's portrait of the mother and daughter from hell is like fine Belgian chocolate: bitter and dark. The play, winner of four Tony awards and written when the playwright was only 25 years old, is surprisingly black in its humor and scathing in its portrait of two women whom life has bound together in rural Ireland. Their relationship is a duel of dysfunction, battled literally to bloody death. Maureen ( Jacqueline Grandt, in a carefully-modulated, committed turn ) is 40 and, perhaps because of a history of mental illness, leads a charmless existence with her harpy of a mother, Mag ( Debra Rodkin, unbelievable in a bad wig and matching brogue ) , who orders her around like a slave and takes delight in complaining about her ailments and using an uncanny ability to discover just the right things to torment her daughter, like reading ( and burning up ) messages left for her and telling anyone within listening distance that the poor woman is a complete nut case. McDonagh spins out this claustrophobic family tale with exactly the right touches of horror and pitch-black comedy. When he comes to the climax of his story, a gut-wrenching scene of real physical torture, it's breathtaking.
The Actors Workshop production has its small space going for it. The intimacy of the tiny storefront adds to the immediacy and the horror, letting audiences feel for themselves how trapped these characters are. It's too bad director Trudie Kessler couldn't have ratcheted up the pain and claustrophobia a bit more. But Kessler has a major hurdle she just can't overcome: the casting of Debra Rodkin as the mother. Rodkin gets an A for effort, but a D for execution. Part of it is the fact that she's just too young for the part, but worse is the fact that she doesn't really convey the joy this woman takes in bringing misery into the lives of others. Rodkin needs to let us see behind this joy to the desperation that lies at the dark heart of her meanness, a true hunger for human connection, and she doesn't. Instead, we're left with a passable, community theater-level performance. When so much hinges on one character, you need someone who can really rise to the challenge.
This play should be searing—a breathless ride into the hell of unwanted familial connection—but instead it's kind of soft…where it should be steely. Director Kessler misses the emotional intensity of the characters' being trapped in their lives, and tries to replace that intensity with mediocrity. It's sad because this is a spellbinding play, one that should be difficult to watch, but impossible to look away from.
This production is neither great nor horrible. It's middling good, and that's not enough…not by a feckin' long shot.