Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Night, Mother has been winningly revived at The Lost Studio, thanks to outstanding performances by Sylva Kelegian and Lisa Richards (who honed their work at the Actors Studio). Kelegian plays Jessie, the woman who is so bored and disappointed by life that she has decided to commit suicide; Richards plays her elderly mother Thelma, a woman fighting with all the weapons she can muster to keep her daughter alive. The high-stakes battle is fought out in real time in this taut, well-directed play whose tension builds relentlessly, broken only by flashes of humor.
The setting is a farmhouse somewhere in middle America (sumptuous design by Jacob Whitmore); Jessie and Thelma inhabit it with comfortable assurance, making it seem as if they’ve lived there all their lives. (The only wrong note is Thelma’s overly drab, bag-lady attire).
Locked in a symbiotic relationship with each other, mother and daughter look death in the face here: Jessie in a flat, matter-of-fact way, Thelma pulling out all the emotional stops. Love and mortality are Marsha Norman’s obvious themes, but for me, her play is mostly about letting go. Jessie lets go of life; Thelma lets go of the past when she realizes it no longer has any significance.
No doubt everyone seeing `Night Mother will have his own. One thing is certain, though, the play’s power and impact are universal.
