The Treasurer
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Cititour.com Review
The troubled mother-son dynamic has fascinated such playwrights as Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee; now Max Posner contributes to the dramatic discussion with “The Treasurer,” an often moving and sometimes funny meditation on parent-child guilt, debuting at Playwrights Horizons.
Anchored by truly great performances by Peter Friedman and Tony Award winner Deanna Dunagan (making a welcome return to New York nearly a decade after her breathtaking turn as Violet Weston in “August: Osage County”), the work may well make you rethink your relationship with your own family.
As we learn in a stunning opening monologue by “the son” (Friedman), Ida Armstrong (Dunagan) left her husband and children when he was 13 and remarried a successful man in Albany, who continuously spent beyond their means. Her husband newly dead, Ida is loath to change her ways, and it is soon left to the still-resentful son to oversee his mother’s finances.
An already tricky relationship is made none the easier by the son’s new role. He has had little contact with her through the years, and must now grapple with the truest thing in his life: the fact that he doesn’t actually “love” his mother. He is surely capable of love; he claims (believably) to be an excellent husband and father, but he cannot summon the forgiveness he needs to deal with her on a regular basis. And he is convinced that he is damned to Hell, literally, for this failing. (Oddly, I would take the family to be Jewish, a religion that doesn’t believe in Hell.)
Meanwhile, we see Ida initially as a careless woman—a grown-up Daisy Buchanan of sorts – as well as one who treasures appearance and adulation above all else. But we eventually realize she is as a now-lonely lady whose yearning for any sort of human connection guides her often ill-advised behavior. (Her interactions with a variety of minor characters well played by Marinda Anderson and Pun Bandhu, who also take on the small roles of Ida’s two other children, are among the play’s strongest scenes.)
Moreover, Ida is suffering from dementia, and as her condition worsens as the play progress, she becomes truly pitiable. Yet, one his one visit to his mother –who is clearly diminished in every way – the son never softens; his haste to end their meal at a Japanese restaurant is painful to watch.
Friedman’s work through these 95 minutes is both seemingly simple and stunningly truthful, while Dunagan unveils every facet of this complex woman – capable of kindness and bitterness – with unerring clarity. David Cromer’s direction is, as usual, smart and sensitive, though neither he nor set designer Laura Jellinek solve the script’s many scene changes efficiently.
Don’t let the plot outline of “The Treasurer” defer you from this well-written play. What sounds merely depressing is actually quite enlightening.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/shows/plays/treasurer
Cast
Marinda Anderson, Pun Bandhu, Deanna Dunagan, Peter Friedman
Open/Close Dates
Opening 9/6/2017
Closing 11/5/2017
Box Office
212-279-4200
Theatre Info
Playwrights Horizons
416 West 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036
Map
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