As a rule, if Linda MacCluggage is associated with a play, it’s one of substance. “Last Lists of My Mad Mother,” which she chose as a co-producer and to direct, is no exception. It shows a woman deteriorating from Alzheimer’s and how her two daughters deal with it. Their portrayers in The Players’ bare-bones black box, where minimal props constitute scenery, excel in poignant realism, almost making up for the play’s deficiencies.
Donna Gerdes’ Mom may slump dejectedly or suffer to articulate something she’s just repeated many times. Yet Mom can instruct alertly and in crisp tones how to pronounce a parcel of cognates or enumerations of rules of grammar or other lists. She’s like the deer, long ago caught in a wire fence, decaying but whom she must visit when out driving with daughter Dot. Gerdes projects her vision of the deer and mental struggle unerringly, as much with facial and bodily gestures as words.
Dialogue challenges in this play seem easily met by Ann Gundersheimer, a feat since the playwright makes so many speeches unnecessary by following up most of Dot’s remarks with actions they describe. Gundersheimer’s impeccable timing and expressions almost, but can’t completely, rescue the lengthy monotony. In director MacCluggage’s sole misjudgment, she telegraphs the overlong, too unneeded qualities with an opening that has Dot s-l-o-w-l-y apply lotion to and massage each of Mom’s feet and then clothe them with socks and then shoes that tie.
Dot being a writer on an assignment basis allows her to live in Mom’s home and care for her. In a surprising late scene, it becomes unclear if Daddy, whom Dot tells Mom is sick, is dead or alive and, if the latter, where he is and how taken care of. He doesn’t figure into the clashes between Dot and Mom over schedules, card games, banking, Publishers Clearing House subscriptions and prizes, but mostly Mom’s sparse eating and choice of food. Often on the brink of despair, Dot deserves the empathy she extends to Mom, for she “cannot do better, not will not.”
Sis, the younger sibling, phones Dot frequently with New-Age philosophic advice (it’s circa 1998, after all). Of course, she’s too obligated to, and busy with, her husband and two kids (in Utah -- `nuf said?) to personally share Mom’s care. But she has researched Mom’s problem and pushes for a special nursing home as a solution.
Amity Hoffman-Destouzos accomplishes the feat of not having Sis just seem selfish, though the playwright hasn’t given her much to go on to establish likeability. Everything of that nature has been lavished on Dot, and Gundersheimer has often kept it in balance via a wry tone or sigh of ultimate acceptance.
Last Lists of My Mad Mother has great relevance to the Sarasota area with its large older population. That the play is mostly unsentimental and refrains from anything ghastly in its depiction of a dementia victim is admirable. But needless repetition of narration preceding the actions described make the play less dramatic and add to the tiring length.
I recorded the opening night curtain call as 20 minutes beyond its projected 70 minute duration. That doesn’t entice one to stay for discussion or to listen to professionals who deal with dementia whether as a personal, family, or societal crisis. So the drama may miss reaching someone it or a discussion might help.
