‘Mothers and Sons’ Is Powerful and Elegant

A bee sting. A cut. A sprain. The pain is immediate, but with time, it fades.

 Lose a child, and the pain is sustained for a lifetime.

Such is the fate of Katherine Gerard, a lonely, embittered woman who lost her son, Andre, 20 years ago to the horror of AIDS, and has finally mustered the courage to meet, face to face, with her son’s former lover.

Annette Miller’s presentation of Katherine in Terrence McNally’s exquisitely fashioned play, “Mothers and Sons,” playing through Sept. 9 in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., is so finely crafted that the audience willingly rises and falls with her deep emotional swings.  She beautifully shares what The New York Times critic, Ben Brantley, identified as “a sorrow beyond words that is always waiting to resurface.”  She is crushingly lonely.  She is angry with no avenue of release.  She feels guilty for what could have been … what should have been.

Her appearance in the understated elegance of the Central Park West apartment of Cal Porter (Bill Mootos) and his husband, Will Ogdon (David Gow,) is unexpected, uncomfortable and, at times, clearly unwanted. Cal was able to overcome his crippling grief at the death of his lover, Andre, eventually met Will and, in a time that has experienced a touch of enlightenment, married and is enjoying fatherhood. Young Bud Ogden-Porter (played from performance to performance by Evan Miller and Hayden Hoffman) is a politely direct and altogether lovable young boy whose childlike honesty creates the moment when the possibility of some healing shines through.

Bill Mootos fully inhabits the character of Andre’s former lover. He is both a gentleman  and a gentle man in equal measure. Armed with McNally’s lyrical dialogue, Mootos skillfully shares Katherine’s pain, contains her latent anger, protects her from spinning out of control and presides over the 95 minute conversation that seems over in a moment.

David Gow’s portrayal of Will beautifully captures the discomfort, the edgy impatience and the unwavering dedication to his own family, their present and their future.  He did not know Andre. He may mourn him the way our society mourns so many brilliant and talented individuals who fell victim to the “plague” of AIDS, but for him, Andre is an abstraction. His husband and son are reality, and he will not allow that reality to be shattered by their visitor. The Mapplethorpe photograph that hangs in the center of Patrick Brennan’s carefully designed set speaks volumes.  We treasure the brilliance of those who have fallen but we move on.

“Mothers and Sons” signals James Warwick’s directorial debut at Shakespeare & Company, and the elegantly blended performances he has elicited from his cast can only make the audience hope that he will return, season after season.

For actors, the intensity of living out characters in a complex display of emotion can be exhausting. The adults in this presentation of “Mothers and Sons” invest their energy and intensity with beautifully believable ease.  

The demands of a production are such, however, that young actors are often doubled up — ­alternating their appearances night to night. Young Hayden Hoffman took the stage for the performance we witnessed and his obvious dramatic gifts were quite apparent.  It is his character, after all, that not only holds the Oreos and glasses of milk he shares with Katharine as the tide of grief begins to turn, but the one who embodies the affirmation captured in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah … “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb…The leopard shall lie down with the young goat …The calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little child shall lead them.”

“Mothers and Sons” at Shakespeare & Company  in Lenox, Mass. runs through Sept. 9.  Tickets can be purchased through the box office at 413-637-3353 or online at www.shakespeare.org.