A luminous Linda Lavin stars in a 'Brief Affair' on Broadway
NEW YORK — What lurks in the imaginations and ambitions of those who seem to settle in life? Can any of us really know the people we love, and as we learn more about them, can we forgive them?
These are a few of the questions that Richard Greenberg poses, with his typical probing intelligence, compassion and wit, in Our Mother's Brief Affair (*** out of four stars), now being presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The play's central character, Anna, is a widow who may be in the final stages of dementia. It's hard to say for sure, for as her grown children make clear to us, she has always been an enigmatic figure.
Played by an ideally cast and exquisite Linda Lavin, Anna lived an apparently comfortable but unfulfilling life as a housewife on suburban Long Island. There were visits to New York City, though, to take her son Seth for viola lessons; it was during these short trips that Anna embarked on the titular affair, with a man she met on a bench at Central Park. At least, that's how she explains it to Seth, now an obituary writer, who dismisses the revelation at first.
"Seventy years of bad novels meet a squadron of fizzled synapses," Seth tells Abby, his twin sister, a librarian freshly drawn from California by Anna's latest hospitalization. Seth is gay and single; Abby is raising a 10-month-old with her female partner, about whom she seems ambivalent.
This is pretty familiar turf for Greenberg, who has a history of making hyper-articulate characters credible, and finding warmth and humor in their struggles. What both tips Brief Affair off-balance and makes it strangely fascinating is a bizarre plot twist, near the end of the first act, involving the man Anna remembers as her lover. As the play periodically shifts from the early 21st century back to the '70s, we see the middle-aged Anna and her flame enjoying stolen moments.
During one, Phil, as he has introduced himself, reveals a secret, one that will resonate with Cold War history buffs. In case you're not among them, Seth and Abby will explain the matter to you, and the moral quandary it puts their mother in. There's a surreal, hilarious scene where the siblings hover as Anna politely questions her mystery man, played by an amusingly non-plussed John Procaccino.
Lynne Meadow's thoughtful direction also culls affecting performances from Greg Keller, an angsty Seth, and Kate Arrington, whose Abby is more mellow but perceptibly troubled. That these characters are now facing middle age themselves, still unsettled, is a source of enduring poignance.
But Lavin's richly nuanced performance is the production's anchor and its treasure, showing us Anna's seductiveness and frailty, her resolve and her resignation as the years pass. We may never get to know her fully, any more than her children do, but we leave grateful for the time we've had.