New Play in Manhattan

Lullaby (by Don Appell) concerns a 38-year-old truck driver who wriggles out from under his mother's thumb to marry a likable nightclub cigarette girl. The play first chronicles a honeymoon in Scranton complicated by Mother's rampageous arrival from New York; it then chronicles household arrangements in New York dislocated by Mother's inching her way into the household.

Since Mother is played by Mary Boland, Lullaby is considerably more farcical than Freudian. And since Mother--when not making herself pathetic and ill-used with every weapon in the Momist kit--proves a good deal of an old rip, Veteran Actress Boland comes through in her breeziest style of impeccable low comedy. Each of her intrusions on her son and daughter-in-law (well played by Jack Warden and Kay Medford) makes a bright little blob of color for the play.

The play even has scattered bright spots of its own: Playwright Appell shows a knack for brightly stenciling familiar characters and situations, and if his dialogue seldom has wit, it often has sass. Thanks to a good cast, Lullaby coaxes a certain amount of routine amusement, first out of Mama's-Boy Meets Girl, then out of depicting home and mother as more like oil and water. But to such standbys of comedy it brings no new insight and only limited verve. Hence it is forced into utter disregard for tone--one minute realistic comedy, the next shameless shenanigans. And when all else fails, Lullaby drags in something about sex.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.