Sometimes it's not so easy to move on. Losing a loved one, a child no less, is losing a part of one's life. Therefore, compassion should be extended to Andre's mother, Katharine (Tyne Daly), even though you might feel like shaking her. How could she not know about the AIDS quilt? How could she state some of the outlandish ideas she still clings to, like never realizing her son was gay when he lived with her? Could she really believe that his partner, Cal, and New York City made him gay?
In Mothers and Sons, Terrence McNally's sensitively penned play at Broadway’s Golden Theater, Katharine, played by Tyne Daly, has not moved on. Twenty years after her son, Andre died of AIDS, Katharine shows up at the spacious Central Park West home of Andre's partner, Cal (Frederick Weller). He has moved on and is married to Will, and they have a six-year-old precocious son. This sudden visit is making both Katharine and Cal very uncomfortable.
Katharine is wrapped in her mink coat as tightly as she is encased in her bitterness, refusing to sit down and "get comfortable." She has come to return her son's diary to Cal, who had given it to her after Andre's death. Neither of them has ever read it. Cal tries to make small talk with Katherine, telling him how talented Andre, an upcoming actor, was. He explains that his own life was difficult after Andre's death but now he is content with Will and their son.
She is not happy at all. She is hurt about her life, her marriage, her future and how Cal could move on and her son is gone. She does agree, however, to stay and look at his box of photographs from his time with Andre. Cal observes that he and Katharine are the only ones they will mean anything to now.
Will (Bobby Steggart), a younger man who never knew Andre, arrives home with their son, Bud (Grayson Taylor), immediately prickly about Katharine's visit. Will is protective of his current family and keeps a polite arm's length from her, showing little empathy for her loss and resentful that Cal had once loved somebody else. He is too young to have been struck by the fear during the crisis.
Director Sheryl Kaller treads a careful, sometimes sluggish path broken with liberal doses of humor, making sure each character is portrayed with clarity. Tyne Daly is compelling as Katharine, her face and movements subtle in its reflections of unease and embitterment. She is furious at the son she never knew and at his sexuality. Katharine is not easy to like, not a friend you might want to get close to. She softens just a tad with Cal's young son's directness and generosity, offering her cookies and asking if she will be his grandmother. She takes off her mink coat for awhile, but if Katharine has come to any new lasting enlightenment about her son and AIDS, it is not apparent.
Weller is tense, polite and has just one point of emotional release with anger at Katharine and society and the disease, remembering that during his time with Andre, gays were not allowed to marry, raise families and had none of the rights that gays now know. "The world wasn't ready," he notes.
A salute to John Lee Beatty's set of Cal's enviable apartment overlooking Central Park with Jeff Croiter's lighting tracing the passing hours. Costumes by Jess Goldstein suit the casualness of the men's everyday life as well as Katherine's conservative taste and the care she took choosing just the right outfit for this important visit.
While Katharine has not moved on, the world has progressed. It's moved on so fast and so far, in fact, that many have turned their backs, or never knew the suffering that HIV and AIDS inflicted on society. They don't recognize that the disease is still with us. It is no longer the crisis it was when Katharine's son died, but the cocktail that slowed the disease's progress is not a cure. That stated, Mothers and Sons is a heartfelt look at a heart-breaking situation.
