Maybe Mother Isn’t Losing It After All
‘It Has to Be You,’ a Catherine Butterfield Comedy
Neil Genzlinger
October 15, 2014: Catherine Butterfield’s It Has to Be You, as staged by the Abingdon Theater Company, is neither the pithiest nor the best acted play around, but at least it makes an effort to defy your expectations. It’s an airy domestic comedy that seems at first as if it is going to work an aging-parent plot that has become all too familiar. Mindy (Ms. Butterfield), Frank (Adam Ferrara) and Jed (Jeffrey C. Hawkins) are siblings whose mother, Dorothy (Peggy J. Scott), lives alone. As the play opens, Mindy and Frank are on their way to see her after receiving reports from a neighbor that she had been acting strangely. They’re preparing to have the time-for-a-nursing-home conversation with Dorothy, but when they arrive their expectations — and yours — are turned on their head.
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