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‘Letting Go’… of sentimentality and focusing on the good
(by Elizabeth Martin - March 19, 2008)
Based on a true story, “Letting Go” is a play with two parts. A mother, Teri, has just died leaving her husband, son and siblings to cope with the loss. The action of the play is divided between the living room of Teri and her husband, Rob, and an ethereal cabin where Teri must review her life under the guidance of an estranged cowboy named Claude.
Concurrent with her struggle to read through the more troubling times in her life, are snapshots of the life of her family unfolding over the course of two years that she can see through a window. She watches these events and desperately wants to intervene, struggling emotionally as she watches her husband date, her son search for a new mother and her siblings argue.
The play is trying to be a touching look into the lives of two families, Teri’s and Lisa’s, her husband’s girlfriend, each struggling to hold it together in different ways despite losses. To “let go” of the past and try to live a bright future.
However, this proves a most trying task. The play succeeds in affecting the audience, as it was difficult to have left there without being touched in one sense or another. The audience appeared to either be moved to tears by the end of the performance or calculating if the play had more false endings than “Return of the King.”
Not because the play was boring, but instead because it didn’t appeal to a broad range of people. There were the few jokes that worked well, a couple of cute lines and the rare moment where an emotional scene worked well, but on a whole, the play had the appeal of a made-for-“Lifetime” movie.
If one likes made-for-“Lifetime” movies, the play succeeded. However, for those of a less than extreme sentimental persuasion, the play was difficult to sympathize with because it comes off as so over the top emotionally.
Such as the fact that for the duration of the play, the audience is vaguely aware that there had been some sort of falling out between the mother and son soon before she died. When just what happened is finally revealed, the event seems a little trivial to elicit such a swell of emotion from Teri.
Despite this, the overall performance given by Janice Kildea, who played Teri, was superb. The interaction between Teri and Claude were among the best scenes. On a whole, the characters’ interactions with one another and their performances were excellent.
What detracted from these great performances was the issue of the play trying to move in too many directions. There was the issue of Teri struggling to let go of her family and move on and there was the struggle of Rob and their son to live without her. There were also deep-seeded abandonment issues with Lisa and her daughter because Lisa was divorced. Then, yet another “letting go” issue comes up at the very end of the play with Claude, Teri’s cowboy guide to death.
When the play stayed on track with the original issue of Rob and his son living without Teri, it was quite enjoyable. Seeing Rob’s struggle to keep himself together for his son and Teri’s interactions with Claude all worked well.
These moments were even good enough where they could have redeemed the play from the pitfalls of extreme sentimentality, were it not for several production issues.
None of which were huge by themselves: a shiny balloon glaring light into people’s eyes, a blank book onstage that a character was supposed to be “reading from” and an actor coming onstage with clothing on inside out. Just several little things like these, in and of themselves little more then first-night jitters, but taken together reflect a sloppy production.
The sloppiness carried over from the script moving in too many directions, so much so that it developed consistency issues that were confusing.
Such as Teri dying in a hospital, in a hospital gown, but then at the end of the play it is revealed that she died the day after she was brought home from the hospital. While it is possible that she took a turn for the worse, went back to the hospital the very next day and then died, the audience needed to think about how it could have happened and that takes them out of the story.
The play was not without its redeeming qualities. There were a few very nice lines, such as “can there be a happily ever after, after happily ever after?” This seems key to the story, and yet the line is seemingly thrown away in the dialogue. When, in reality, this could have been a more central theme in the play and tied it together better.
Variations of this theme are used between Rob and Lisa as they struggle to be happy, but the issue could have tied in so nicely with other aspects of the play, and yet didn’t.
Although the title of the show is used constantly in the dialogue, the show was more about moving on than letting go, as reflected in this line.
Instead of focusing on the bad, and thus dwelling in over-emotional misery, the play could have easily focused more on moving on while still retaining the very real pain that needed to be dealt with by Teri and her family after her death.
“Letting Go” runs now through March 22 at the Women’s Theatre Company in Parsippany, located at 1130 Knoll Road, Lake Hiawatha. Tickets cost $15 for regular admission and $13 for seniors. Call 973-316-3033, press 1.
Photos courtesy of The Women’s Theatre Company
Photo 1: Keith Beechey of West Caldwell and Janice Kildea of Dover in the new play, “Letting Go” by New Jersey playwright Marylee Martin, which opened at The Women's Theater Company on March 7.
Photo 2: Equity actress, Valerie Stack Dodge of Morris Township and young actress, Katie Mitchell of Morris Plains, are mother and daughter
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