The Sins of the Mother: a robust and surprising plot by Israel Horovitz

The old television series Cheers may have celebrated places where everyone knows your name, but American playwright Israel Horovitz is less than convinced that familiarity breeds contentment. Just ask the characters in Horovitz’s Sins of the Mother which NORT is presenting in admirably muscular fashion.

The play centres on the economically eviscerated fishing village of Gloucester, Mass. where three men, who have known each other for longer than may be healthy, spend too much time together with devastating consequences.

Combative and frustrated by unemployment, the cynical Bobby (Jerome Bourgault), hair-trigger-tempered Frankie (Sean Tucker) and sensitive Dubbah (Adam Skanks) tangle as they wait one morning for the unemployment insurance office to open. With them is the fish-out-of-water Douggie (Ray Besharah), a native of Gloucester who has returned after several years of wandering the country. A dark secret involving Douggie’s late mother connects the four even more deeply than does sharing a common hometown.

Reminding us of how satisfying ensemble acting can be in the age of ubiquitous solo shows, this quartet of performers under director Paul Dervis plunges us immediately into Horovitz’s robust and surprising plot. With the exception of the quiet Douggie who, like the audience, is the outsider looking in, the characters storm and rage, their feelings of uselessness and shame in a climate of severe unemployment fueling a readiness to fight at the drop of a hat.

Jerome Bourgault is especially good as the confrontational Bobby, a man whose drive to always dominate belies his powerlessness and guilt.

The show is also, particularly in the early going, sometimes very funny, and director and cast maximize the tension between humour and desperate seriousness. Unfortunately, the production lags in the first part of act two when the actors struggle to maintain drama as the script takes an abruptly quieter turn. Thanks to Horovitz’s clever plot, they’re soon back on track.

Sins of the Mother is not profound, but it does provoke questions about how we deal with those who cause us deep pain. This production captures those questions in visceral fashion.

Patrick Langston

Ottawa, 5 February, 2011

Sins of the Mother

A production of the New Ottawa Repertory  Theatre

Directed by Paul Dervis

Set Design: Doug  Phlllips

Sound: A.D.Skadamanks

CAST

Douggie:   Ray Besharah

Bobby:   Jérome Bourgault

Frankie and Philly :  Sean Tucker

Dubbah: Adams Skanks

Plays at the Natalie Stern Studio Theatre Ottawa

School of Speech and Drama

Friday, Saturday, Sunday February  4th to 13th.