‘Mother’ a difficult assignment

TOM TITUS

Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “‘night, Mother” is not

an easy assignment for college students, no matter how advanced. Nor

is it easy to watch, though it occupies just 75 minutes of the

playgoer’s time.

Norman’s two characters, a mother and daughter, both living

unfulfilled lives, are spending their last evening together -- before

the daughter takes her own life. Orange Coast College’s Repertory

Theater has taken on this project with mixed results.

In director Samantha Wellen’s gradually involving production, the

mother (Averie Huffine) and her daughter (Courtney Barr) spend a good

portion of the play in merely conversational conflict. The reality of

the drama doesn’t really kick in until the last 10 or 15 minutes.

Presumably guarding against peaking too early, Wellen’s actresses

spend much of the early part of the play in rushed monotones,

building toward the climax in which the mother makes a desperate

appeal to her determined daughter. If some of this urgency were

incorporated in the first half-hour, the effect on the audience would

be magnified.

Huffine reasonably portrays the physical limitations of her

character’s age, but the horror she must feel when she learns early

on of her daughter’s intentions never really surfaces. The ability is

there, as she proves later on; it’s just late in manifesting itself.

Barr is more successful as the thirtyish daughter in good health

(despite epilepsy which hasn’t impacted her in over a year), who

decides life holds no more attraction for her. As she meticulously

stocks her mother’s kitchen and insures that all her future needs

will be met, Barr is almost a robotic presence, which oddly enough

works for this character.

Even at its brevity, “‘night, Mother” contains much filler

material about the young woman’s disappointing but hardly

suicide-inducing life. What this prize-winning play lacks is an

overriding motive for such a drastic decision.

David Scaglione’s kitchen / living room setting is splendidly

realistic, and Mark Roudybush’s pre-show soundtrack conveys the bleak

mood, at least when the lyrics of the high-volume songs can be

understood.

*

South Coast Repertory’s Junior Players, one of the advanced

performance ensembles in the theater’s youth and teen programs, is

presenting its spring production, “The Trials of Alice in

Wonderland,” in the theater’s Nicholas Studio this weekend.

The musical play, under the direction of Hisa Takakuwa, focuses on

Lewis Carroll’s young heroine, who is placed on trial for

“conspicuous behavior.” Present in the courtroom are the King and

Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter, among other

familiar figures.

Cast members are youngsters in grades five through eight who have

been selected through an audition process after completing at least

two years of training in Theater Conservatory’s youth program at

South Coast Repertory. Students in the Teen Players will present

their spring production, “Club / Underworld,” May 21 to 29.

Performances of “Alice” will be given Saturday and Sunday at 1 and

4 p.m. Tickets, at $7, may be ordered by calling the box office at

(714) 709-5555.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Daily Pilot. His reviews

appear Fridays.