WELL
At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., at Astor Place. Telecharge, (212) 239-6200.
FAMILY is at the root of theater. Think Shakespeare, O’Neill . . . and Lisa Kron, whose last and solo effort, “2.5 Minute Ride,” dealt with her father’s visit to Auschwitz.
In her new show, “Well,” Kron takes up the subject of her mother, and expands her cast to six.
Kron’s mother, Ann, isn’t a well woman – subject to various, often mysterious illnesses, she wears a housedress and sloppy slippers, and spends a good deal of time sleeping in a La-Z-Boy.
Ill as she is, though, Ann somehow finds the spirit – in 1960s Lansing, Mich. – to organize a campaign to integrate her neighborhood. What she couldn’t find in and for herself – wellness – she found for her community.
As Ann, Jayne Houdyshell gets this paradoxical woman – half crazy, half idealistic, half self-destructive – to a T.
Alas, Kron and director Leigh Silverman aren’t content to tell the mother’s story, but try to jazz it up with trivial and tiresome meta-theatrical business.
And so we have Kron, reading from cards, announcing that she’s going to tell the story of her ascent from illness into wellness.
Her mother’s enthusiasm for integration becomes complicated for Lisa when a black girl, played as a comically exaggerated teenager by Saidah Arrika Ekulona, harasses her at school.
Kron constantly interrupts her story to talk to the audience about her problems as a playwright and as a young woman. She wants to tell the story of how she escaped her mother’s hypochondria, but she never really tells it.
Instead, she pretends to lose control of her story as the other characters get in the way – barging in to offer us sodas or generally interrupting the proceedings.
This arch cuteness is pretentious and annoying. Worse, it detracts from what Houdyshell and Kron have created – a very memorable, if unwell, character.