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NY Theater: "A Mother, A Daughter and a Gun"

Very funny dark comedy about a controlling mom

By Lucy Komisar

Barra Grant's quirky dark comedy blows mother-daughter relations out of the water. Her over-the-top parody of the controlling mother produces a cacophony of laughs of recognition that suddenly stop with horror at how far this mother will go.

Olympia Dukakis creates a brilliant portrait of Beatrice, the under-achieving but desperately ambitious mother. Demure in burgundy suit and blonde hair, she is anything but. Dukakis gives her a tough-talking demeanor that conjures up a cross between Jimmy Durante and Jackie Mason.

She is expertly matched by Veanne Cox, the anxious, slightly bedraggled Jess, who is trying to keep from suffocating under her mother's attentions; Cox can express distress or astonishment in a barely perceptible glance or a twitch.

They joust at a fast past set by director Jonathan Lynn who, (my highest praise), keeps the story far from the vapidity of TV sitcom. This is way too subtle and clever for television.

It would be easy to turn this into TV slapstick. Young Jess, in her early 30s, has bought a pistol to wreck revenge on her husband, David (Matthew Greer), who has left their New York apartment after starting an affair. His portrait on the wall is defaced with a black X. (The living room and bedroom, by designer Jesse Poleshuck, is typical Upper West Side fare -- couches, bookshelves, CDs.)

Faced with that crisis, Beatrice turns conventionality and status-seeking into an art form. She liked David because he was the one of Jess's boyfriends who wore a suit. "You kill David? Where you going to find someone else at this late date?"

Jess understands her mother viscerally. "You threw out my gun?" she inquires in disbelief. "You wouldn’t throw away anything that could be returned." But she can't seem to get out of her thrall and throw her out.

Grant has a wonderful sense of the satire of place. Two attractive young lesbians (Stephanie Kurtzuba and Laura Heisler) want to adopt the child of the pregnant Jess. To demonstrate their suitability, they announce that they live at (upscale) 71st Street and Lexington Avenue and, "We will kill ourselves to get him or her into (upscale liberal private) Dalton."

The only one with a grasp on reality seems to Beatrice's husband Alvin (George S. Irving), an easy-going, kind, somewhat slovenly New York garment center guy. His one desperate attempt at happiness was an affair with Chang Poo, an abacus-clicking accountant who talked about peasants beating their laundry on the river beds.

It takes a while – and a serious of comic events – for Jess to understand the jealousy at the heart of the mother-daughter relationship and confront her: "Tell me you didn’t wish you been born a guppy so you could skip the whole maternal charade and eat your young." In the meantime, the comic and perceptive interaction provokes a lot of knowing laughter.

"A Mother, A Daughter and a Gun." Written by Barra Grant. Directed by Jonathan Lynn.

Starring Olympia Dukakis, Veanne Cox, George S. Irving, David Bishins, Mario Campanaro, Katrina Ferguson, Matthew Greer, Laura Heisler, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Daniel Pearce.

Dodger Stages, 340 West 50th Street. Tue 7pm; Wed-Sat 8pm; Wed & Sat 2pm; Sun 3pm. Running time 2:15. $51-$66. 212-239-6200.

by Carol Rosegg.

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