A Charity Case, written and directed by Wendy Beckett, a confusing mish-mash of a play, is supposed to be about abused adopted children, but it could be about any neglected offspring with a solipsistic parent. Characters introduced are: a colorfully dressed street (bag?)lady (Alysia Reiner), a mother (Alison Fraser), and her 17-year-old adopted daughter (Jill Shackner), which I thought was a look back at the colorful lady’s past as she lurked, high up behind a grill, looking down at her adoptive mother and her younger self. But maybe not.
There is a destructive psychological battle with lots of surreal yowling between daughter and self-absorbed mother, a dress-maker. And we get psychological attacks by alternate voices of several imagined birth mothers. It is all played out on a great, tall, two-level set by David L. Arsenault, with excellent lighting by Travis McHale and creative costuming by Theresa Squire. There is some imaginative business on the stage, but as the possibility arises that the colorful bag lady might be the formerly-depressed birth mother coming out of her cocoon, Charity gets rather crazy and more confusing. The acting by all three women is quite good, and Fraser is terrific in a range of emotions and alcoholism.
