STANDING TALL: Mothers take the ball and
prepare to run with it. |
Who is playing to win, and for what stakes, in a soccer game between moms and their eight-year-olds? This is a matter of some contention, at first, between three women who have their sons and not much else in common. Nancy, for example, is appalled to find that Alison is actually trying to beat the boys, so she and Lynn convince her to miss a few passes and take one for the kids. Isn’t that the creed of the soccer mom, after all — to live for and through your offspring, rather than yourself? But there are a few alternate strategies to this game, the women find, in Secrets of a Soccer Mom, a sassy feel-good comedy by Kathleen Clark, sharply directed by Christopher Schario for The Public Theatre.It’s autumn in New York, which means deep soccer season for three variations on the modern American Everymom: Armed with a planner and forests worth of PTA paperwork, Lynn (Maura O’Brien) spearheads every extracurricular crusade there is. The wisecracking but obsessively watchful Nancy (Janet Mitchko) starts and stops whole conversations around the scurryings of her own kids. And fierce but fragile Alison (Heather Dilly), blonde, slim, and maritally unsatisfied, is as classic a MILF as they come. All three would do anything for their children, including the intentional mis-kick, but what are any of them doing for themselves these days? As the women wait around on the sidelines for Team B’s next go, they slowly talk through the hidden perils of a world in which grown-ups do most of their consorting around field trips, bake sales, and the aspirations of eight-year-olds.
That world is evoked with spot-on verisimilitude in Schario’s production, from the women’s threads (jeans and no-nonsense tops for Nancy and Lynn; a snappy pink and black track suit for Alison) to the shrill timbres of their voices yelling to kids, in-laws, and other parents across the field. This authenticity extends even to the echt school-daze look of the moms’ sideline — designer Jennifer Madigan’s red risers, bright green turf, and turning leaves against blue skies; the rich October slant of Burt Garvey’s light.
Schario’s all-equity cast is smart and engaging, as nimble with the women’s rare breakdowns as with the comic timing of zingers and mimed soccer moves. Dilly, who created the role of Lynn in Tony-winner Judith Ivy’s original production, makes a volatile and endearing Alison, and O’Brien’s Lynn brings great depth and humor to her Supermom. Mitchko, a Public Theatre regular and its associate artistic director, is bright, wry, and warm. She performs a great extended monologue about being on vacation on St. Martin and leaving behind her kid/mortgage/career-obsessed companions to walk down to the next beach — a nude one, as it happens. She then beautifully describes watching two naked women laughing together in the water, and being overwhelmed with the desire to be those women, who still laugh with so much joie de vivre.
| Secrets of a Soccer Mom by Kathleen Clark | Directed by Christopher Schario | Produced by The Public Theatre, in Lewiston | through November 8 | 207.782.3200 |
As the three mothers tell each other their secrets, Mitchko, O’Brien, and Dilly are especially — and perhaps most importantly — successful at conveying the arc of the women’s rapport. From an initial rote friendliness, the mothers move through confrontation and intimacy to an impromptu sisterhood, a fired-up team with a surer vision of how to play and win at this game.
