Review: A Mother, the Hecht on Brecht Everything Bagel

“Whatever happens, don’t forget about Brecht,” advised Jessica Hecht’s director at Camp Shalom Aleichem, the Connecticut theater camp she attended as a teen. And unfortunately, she hasn’t, as evidenced by A Mother, the flighty Brechtian memoir that Hecht dreamt up with playwright Neena Beber and that’s now making its world premiere at Baryshnikov Arts Center. A manic explosion of conceits, some of them awfully stale, it is the theatrical equivalent of an everything bagel that has fallen behind the counter.

This is doubly disappointing as Hecht is one of the most consistent actors in New York. Her recently performance in the Broadway run of Eureka Day was the highlight of the show. But even her distinctive magnetism is no match for a script that borders on incoherence.

Part of it takes place at a Connecticut theater camp, where 20-year-old Michelle (Delilah Napier) has been contracted to direct the kids in a production of Paint Your Wagon following a stint in Berlin, where she made puppet theater and sat in on rehearsals of the Berliner Ensemble. Bored with Lerner and Loewe’s musical about California gold prospectors, she inserts scenes from Brecht’s The Mother (about the brave mother of a revolutionary Russian laborer) in an effort to develop the class consciousness of these young Nutmeggers.

That’s funny enough, but, like Michelle, Hecht and Beber are unsatisfied with mining the potential of just that story. They splice in scenes from December 1979, when Hecht was visiting her grandparents in Miami Beach and fell in love on the dance floor with a young Black man named Daryl (a charming Fergie L. Philippe). That story is interrupted for a version of The Mother transposed to the docks of Miami at the time of the Mariel boatlift. There’s also a plotline about the murder of Arthur Lee McDuffie and the riots that followed the acquittal of the cops who killed him. And there’s a brief diversion into the world of competitive synchronized swimming.

It seems like Hecht and Beber intend for the audience to marvel at the beautiful tapestry so many disparate threads can weave. But it honestly feels more like they asked ChatGPT to write a show that would most appeal to frantic not-for-profit literary mangers circa June 2020, and this is what it spit back.

Director Maria Mileaf attempts to bring order to the event with an energetic staging and lively performances. And it’s true that one can often dazzle the audience with directorial precision. Unfortunately, the five actors (Hecht, Philippe, and Napier joined by Zane Pais and Portia) seem under-rehearsed, with Hecht repeatedly stumbling over her own lines and those of her castmates.

Karen Boyer’s costumes reference the late ’70s with only partial commitment (which is the right choice for a script that jumps around so much), while sound designer Nick T. Moore treats us to the Lipps Inc. classic “Funkytown,” with genuine disco lighting by Matthew Richards.

Set designer Neil Patel was clearly most inspired by the synchronized swimming bit, creating an upstage wall of mildewing blue tile with a shower head. Downstage is governed by a series of red curtains that, in a gesture toward Brechtian authenticity, appear to have been dragged behind Mother Courage’s cart from Prenzlau to Fürstenfeldbruck. They help facilitate the multiple dimension shifts required, but red cloth can only do so much.

The show reaches its dizzying climax with a mash-up of the Kaddish and “Wade in the Water,” with a groovy a cappella backbone that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an episode of Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? The music is performed live by composers Norman “Skip” Burns and Willian Kenneth Vaughn, with additional music by Mustapha Khan. It fulfills the Brechtian requirement for song, but like so much else about this 100-minute hodgepodge, feels tacked on.

It’s the kind of show only a mother could love.