To See or Not to See: Mother Night

Mother Night, based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut, is a study in character and morals; it may just be a story better suited to the written word than to the stage.

Mother Night is the fictional memoirs of Howard W. Campbell Junior (Gabriel Grilli), an American born man who was raised in Germany. The play begins with him in prison in Israel as a war criminal. He looks back on his life and shares it with the audience.

He was a famous playwright and was married to a famous German actress, Helga (Trish Lindstrom). As the Nazis began to rise in Germany, Campbell was approached, secretly, by a woman named Wirtanen (Andrea Gallo) who worked for the CIA. Agreeing to help, he eventually becomes the radio voice of the Nazi party and works under Joseph Goebbels…except no one in America knows he’s a double agent. This brings up the question of: if you’re pretending to be someone, do you become them?

After the war, he moves to New York City in obscurity befriending an elderly artist named Kraft (Dave Sikula); it turns out Kraft is a Russian spy. Still with me? Several other things happen in his life (including a brush with a white supremacist and mistaken identity of his long-lost wife). In short, there was a lot going on, and, unfortunately, the play felt long.

Having not read the book it was adapted from, I’m not sure whether much material was cut or not. However, the production could still use some pruning or tightening up. Or, perhaps, it was the acting that was a bit lackluster; it wasn’t quite enough to keep the audience riveted. While Andrea Gallo was quite good in her roles, the rest of the cast wavered between good and fair. Gabriel Grilli, as Campbell, was mostly indifferent. He didn’t have a range of emotion. Trish Lindstrom played both Helga and other characters well, but it was hard to grasp any depth of character. It could be the writing itself or the direction (the play is adapted and directed by Brian Katz).

Overall, Mother Night is a production that fairs decently, but not one that audiences will be scrambling to see.

For information and tickets to 59E59 Theater’s production of Mother Night, click here. 

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg