'night, Mother Reviews
ReviewPlays.com- Recommended
"...Thus unfolds one of the most gripping, engrossing and riveting evenings of theatre one can experience, painfully detailed, absorbingly anticipatory, and sometimes pervasive with dark humor. Performed in real time, between 8:15 and 9:40 p.m. the conversation between them after her disturbing declaration fluctuates between the mother pleading for reconsideration and the daughter calmly making her case for suicide."
Advice To The Players- Somewhat Recommended
"...Kelegian's dead-eyed determination ("I'm just not having a very good time, and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse") is the reason to see this revival of Norman's play, which originally starred Kathy Bates and Anne Pitoniak and was later turned into a film with Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft. (Plans for a future Broadway revival with Audra McDonald and Oprah Winfrey have had the rialto buzzing.) The play takes place in real time, with a kitchen clock counting the minutes to the fateful moment when Jessie utters her final "night, Mother.' The pressure cooker Norman has contrived is gripping, but there's too much theatrical business about marshmallows, caramel apples and garbage bag ties. Director Aliah Whitmore doesn't always manage to neutralize the domestic staginess in this Whitmore Eclectic and Ellen Gerstein production at the Lost Studio. Richards makes believable the helplessness of Thelma's predicament, but her performance occasionally devolves into country caricature, and her shifting relationship to her daughter's decision isn't completely worked out."
Total Theater- Recommended
"...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)."
Broadway World- Recommended
"...OMG! Everyone in the audience, including the men, ended up sobbing by the end of this, in real time, eavesdropping of a mother and daughter's last conversation, otherwise better known as Marsha Norman's Pulitzer Prize winning ‘night, Mother. 90 minutes never went by so fast and so gut-wrenchingly painful, yet curiously amusing. Aliah Whitmore deftly directs her two extremely gifted actresses, Sylva Kelegian and Lisa Richards, in an only-what's-needed, streamlined, concise battle of wits between Jessie and her Mama."