`Bradley, this is your mother calling.” That greeting/warning ushers in “MotherSON,” an engaging 90-minute one-act written and performed by Jeffrey Solomon. The latest offering in Bailiwick Repertory’s summer-long, gay-themed Pride 2000 festival, Solomon’s warm-hearted, semi-autobiographical tour-de-truth depicts the comically complex and wryly evolving relationship of Mindy Levy, a full-time Jewish mother, and her gay son Brad.
Though he charts the familiar territory of “Torch Song Trilogy,” Solomon’s deftly contrasted portraits of parent and child and attention to filial/maternal detail make “MotherSON” as accessible as enjoyable. Through phone calls, answering machine messages, slides from a family album and a fine performance, Solomon generously creates mother and son from the outside in.
When after seven years of pointless denial, Brad comes out about his homosexuality to his mother, Mindy churns with guilt (“I must have pissed off God but good!”), anger over grandchildren she won’t get to spoil (“I feel a little cheated”) and denial (“It’s a phase–besides, what about that copy of Hustler I found?”).
Coming out of her own closet, Mindy wises up to the homophobia of her card-playing companions. If the mother and son quarrel over why he can’t bring his boyfriend with the nose rings to a family wedding, they find common cause in P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and a death in their newly extended family. Soon this Long Island matron is showing pictures of her son and his new doctor-boyfriend to her friends at the mall, marching in the Pride Parade, and, in a final moving parting, blessing him for life.
In a phone message Mindy tells Brad, “I’m in you,” that he’ll see her whenever he looks in the mirror. Solomon’s solo proves it–a lovely case of art completing life. David Carson’s staging adds charm to conviction. Without resorting to stereotypes, Solomon’s patient, tested Brad inevitably harmonizes with Mindy, a mother turned activist whose poignant treble conveys eggshell fragility and a fierce stubbornness in anger and in love. (Thankfully, we’re spared the harpy overkill of Anne Bancroft’s Jewish mother in “Torch Song Trilogy.”)
An Emmy-nominated writer for television and children’s theater, Solomon captures and relishes the moments of truth that connect loved ones as much as blood the way Mindy protectively holds her purse and phone, how Brad seems to cry as he laughs at her attempts at humor, and why both can read each other’s heart. Despite a title that embraces millions, “MotherSON” remains powerfully personal yet as universal as family values.
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“MotherSON”
Where: Bailiwick Repertory, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
When: Through July 2
Phone: 773-883-1090
