‘Our Mother’s Brief Affair,’ a Play About Unmoored Lives
Ben BrantleyJanuary 20, 2016: Every mother is Greta Garbo to her children, at least upon occasion. The woman you were closest to in the world, the one who weaned and wiped you, could suddenly seem so ravishingly remote it was scary. What was really on her mind those nights she tucked you into bed, deliciously lipsticked and perfumed for an evening out? Such is the enigma who presides over “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” Richard Greenberg’s untethered play about unmoored lives, which opened on Wednesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, starring a marvelous Linda Lavin. Her name is Anna, and while she has a way of wearing a Burberry trench coat with a certain je ne sais quoi, this Long Island housewife would be few people’s idea of a glamorous sphinx. But to the twins she gave birth to and reared in a state of otherwise-engaged preoccupation, Anna is a tantalizing unknown, especially as she nears death. “Who was she?” asks her son, Seth (an anxiously neutral Greg Keller), as the play begins. Seth works as an obituary writer but can’t begin to sum up this particular life.
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