The New York Times - Recommended
"...Mothers and Sons, ¯ which opened on Monday night at the John Golden Theater in an impeccably acted production directed by Sheryl Kaller, is wrapped in a sense of urgency that paradoxically saps it as a drama. It wears its significance defiantly and a bit stiffly ¦Mothers and Sons ¯ is propelled by people peering into and shouting over that chasm. It is, in essence, a debate play with fraught emotional underpinnings, and it doesn't avoid the stasis of that genre. It also tends to sabotage its potential to move us by making the debate, rather than psychological credibility, its first priority. Within those limitations, the cast creates some beautifully observed moments. Ms. Daly, last seen on Broadway in a triumph of skill over unlikely casting as Maria Callas in Mr. McNally's Master Class, ¯ again proves herself one of our most formidable stage actresses."
NY Daily News - Somewhat Recommended
"...In the opening scene of Mothers and Sons, ¯ Cal and Katharine stare out a window of his comfortably lived-in Central Park West apartment. It's the only instance these two people will share the same view on anything in veteran Tony winner Terrence McNally's sincere but frustrating drama about family and fear. There's grist for a provocative and touching drama as a mom takes stock of the life her son might have had. But the script doesn't go there. Instead it careens from expositional jibber-jabber ¦to pithy one-liners ¦to preachy asides ¦And there are talking points gay marriage, survivor guilt, homophobia and fear. Director Sheryl Kaller and her talented cast can't turn these topics into cohesive drama. Weller, who's a bit mannered, and Steggert, who's effusive, manage to hold their own. Taylor, at times hard to understand, has been directed to be irritatingly adorable. The estimable Daly, who's stern and stately, is eventually undone by her character."
Associated Press - Recommended
"...Daly ¦is simply wonderful here, a remote and chilly guest who clings to old ideas even as she knows they are out of date and secretly pines for love. The gentle and moving "Mothers and Sons ¦touches on those terrible years when AIDS was a death sentence. The 90-minute play moves quickly, and although some of the most angry exchanges seem to erupt from nowhere, the playwright beautifully shows how close to the surface long-suppressed emotions and slights can fester. The ending is somewhat ambiguous as it winds down hopeful without being maudlin."
Hollywood Reporter - Recommended
"...Tyne Daly is far too grounded and honest an actor to give an inauthentic performance, but she deserves a more satisfying play than Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons. There's no shortage of thematic breadth here ¦But while it's absorbing and at times mildly affecting, this shapeless drama never probes deep enough, its air of artificiality making it appear to have been rushed to Broadway with insufficient development. Too much of McNally's dialogue reeks of dutiful exposition (characters telling one another things they know, solely for the audience's benefit) or shoehorned agenda points...the dramatic engine is underpowered, and as a snapshot of gay experience, its sociopolitical perspective is superficial."
Vulture - Recommended
"...Tyne Daly isn't in Master Class this year, but she's giving one ¦part of what makes Daly's performance so memorable is that she does not justify her character. Terrence McNally ¦has stuck with his methods regardless of trends and faithfully tracked his main subject how gay men made a world for themselves, and lost it as it moved from avant-garde to painfully topical to comfortably mainstream to almost old hat. But only almost, as Mothers and Sons demonstrates. It's true the storytelling is as traditional as the maroon-and-gold show curtain at the Golden Gradually, though and the play is only 90 minutes it becomes clear that McNally is using the cover of his mild dramaturgy to slip some new ideas across the frontier. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Mothers and Sons aside from Daly's riveting performance is how touchingly Cal (and McNally) forgive the Andre's mothers of this world. But they should be warned: Will won't."
Variety - Recommended
"...Terrence McNally tries to cover a lot of territory in Mothers and Sons ¯ ¦Lucky for this high-profile scribe, he has sensitive interpreters of these themes in thesps Frederick Weller and the ever-astonishing Tyne Daly. But the ideas are so diffuse and the dramatic structure so disjointed, there's no cohesion to the material and no point to the plot. Helmer Sheryl Kaller wisely lets these compatible thesps work their way around the holes in the text and the gaps in the action. But in the end, no one can come to the aid of a play that doesn't ¦ quite ¦ exist."
USA Today - Recommended
"... ¦Nor is it entirely credible that by the time McNally's 90-minute play has run its course, Katharine has shared doubts and confidences with the men she believes betrayed and replaced her dead son, and they with her. The revelations can, not surprisingly, seem contrived to shed light on the characters' motives and conflicts. For those who can look past such weaknesses, though, Mothers emerges as one of the more engaging and uplifting new plays of the season. It doesn't hurt, certainly, that McNally and director Sheryl Kaller have for their leading lady the irreplaceable Tyne Daly, who makes Katharine's quirks and contradictions so vivid that you'll find yourself at once offended by her and richly entertained. Frederick Weller makes Cal convincing in both his cultivated restraint and the flashes of long-festering anger that seep into his conversation with Katharine. Bobby Steggert's Will, a generation younger than Cal, is more emotionally raw, so that his indignation flares more readily ¦"
New York Post - Somewhat Recommended
"...A clunker of a Broadway show, Mothers and Sons ¯ asks us to endure the vacuous chit-chat of deeply unpleasant people. The worst part is, there isn't even a good reason for their chit-chatting in the first place. Fortunately, one of them is played by Tyne Daly, who gives the character of Katharine Gerard the embittered mother of a dead gay son the complexity and dignity playwright Terrence McNally refuses her. Under Sheryl Kaller's stilted direction, all three adults look uncomfortable, though at least Daly's character is meant to be that way. The actress suggests a world of pain, grief and anger behind the stoic, matronly facade, and she lands her zingers with ease. A lot more sympathetic onstage than on the page, Katharine ends up owning the show."
Bergen Record - Recommended
"...As a drama, "Mothers and Sons" has its issues, particularly in its characterizations. Despite a sharp, unsentimental performance by Daly, Katharine remains frustratingly out of focus, seesawing between naĆÆve and sophisticated, dense and smart, at the whim of the playwright. McNally is not unconcerned with Katharine's sadness, but he positions her as a kind of dinosaur, the "other," in a play that celebrates the current state of gay life. The gay characters are idealized. Directed by Sheryl Kaller, the play has a rather clumsy construction, with pretexts continuously popping up for characters to leave the room ¦so that the remaining pair can have their private conversations. "Mothers and Sons," which runs just 90 minutes, is best experienced as a kind of marker in social history, an expression of pride in progress, dignity and growing power."
Newsday - Recommended
"...Here we have the nuclear tug-of-war still tugging between the loved ones of Andre, 29, a promising actor who died of AIDS in 1989. This is a "never forget" message that McNally surrounds with a sentimental, four-generation family story with plenty of his sharp observations and wit, but not enough to disguise the mechanics and contrivances that drive his worthy intentions."
amNY - Recommended
"...Terrence McNally may not be a particularly great playwright, but he is certainly a prolific one. "Mothers and Sons," ¦ is one of his most compelling plays in years, even if it feels underdeveloped and offers little in terms of dramatic movement. Devised as a single scene without pause, "Mothers and Sons" makes for a well-constructed, often funny dialogue that is both provocative and heartfelt. But after 90 minutes, very little has changed and no climax has been reached. As she did in McNally's "Master Class," Daly offers a masterful performance, delivering her lines with a dry acidity and firm poise while her reactions to both men reveal her conflicted emotions. Steggert...once again excels at playing a good-natured, clean-cut and sensitive youth."
NorthJersey - Recommended
"...As a drama, "Mothers and Sons" has its issues, particularly in its characterizations. Despite a sharp, unsentimental performance by Daly, Katharine remains frustratingly out of focus, seesawing between naĆÆve and sophisticated, dense and smart, at the whim of the playwright. McNally is not unconcerned with Katharine's sadness, but he positions her as a kind of dinosaur, the "other," in a play that celebrates the current state of gay life. The gay characters are idealized. Directed by Sheryl Kaller, the play has a rather clumsy construction, with pretexts continuously popping up for characters to leave the room ¦so that the remaining pair can have their private conversations. "Mothers and Sons," which runs just 90 minutes, is best experienced as a kind of marker in social history, an expression of pride in progress, dignity and growing power."
Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"... ¦Terrence McNally's moving, intensely resonant new Broadway play "Mothers and Sons" ¦The persona of the writer counts for a great deal here, aesthetically, politically and otherwise. This is also an exceptionally timely play, a piece that puts great change into context ¦Fundamentally, though, McNally has written a play of reconciliation ¦the truly formidable Daly does offer us the often exquisitely detailed sense of a woman taking in a new set of data, and testing out old feelings, just as the understated Weller, who is playing a very decent man, provides a rich exploration of the complexities that arrive when any old relationship, romantic or otherwise, rears its head in the present. My eyes were moist through a good amount of "Mothers and Sons," frankly, even in its more manipulative sections ¦"
NBC New York - Highly Recommended
"...With Mothers & Sons, ¯ McNally...has again crafted a narrative that could not be more particular to time (the present) and location (the progressive Upper West Side). This time, it's a story rooted in optimism, and one that manages to look simultaneously over its shoulder and straight ahead. Daly gives an exquisite performance as a lonely, suicidal woman desperate to imagine a life her son might have led. Weller ¦has fast become one of New York's most useful stage actors ¦Together, Daly and Weller have dynamic chemistry, lurching from moments of mutual respect to moments of accusation, and back. Mothers & Sons ¯ isn't a melodramatic play about remembering the dead. Mostly, McNally captures a moment of hope and promise. I thought Mothers & Sons ¯ was fantastic, for how effectively it locks down this unique period of time that is 2014, in New York City, amid the explosive progress of the gay rights movement in the last handful of years. I hope it finds a broad audience."
Time Out New York - Highly Recommended
"...The sincere drama Mothers and Sons marks a return to familiar territory the play is a follow-up to McNally's 1988 playlet (and 1990 telecast) Andre's Mother, in which a woman hovers at her gay son's memorial service and also a return to form. Though dated at times, and shaded with passive aggression, this is arguably McNally's best play in 20 years. Sensitively directed by Sheryl Kaller, Mothers and Sons rarely lags as it unfurls in a single unbroken scene. And Daly's commanding performance helps check McNally's impulses toward pop sociology and reverse nostalgia. She has the strength and give of melting steel."
The Wrap - Recommended
"...After her debut in 1990 on PBS's American Playhouse, ¯ the gorgon mother known as Katharine Gerard is not a character most people would care to revisit, least of all in a full-length Broadway play. But there she is on stage at the Golden Theatre, where Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons ¯ opened Monday, now inhabited by Tyne Daly and acting every bit the human refrigerator that the late Sada Thompson presented in that 1990 episode titled Andre's Mother. ¯ Did McNally bring Katharine back just to beat her up again? Maybe. Whatever, this public trashing is a riveting show. Of course, by play's end Katharine has delivered a couple of bombshells that explain her bitterness, if they don't exactly absolve her, and Daly gets some of the evening's biggest laughs without even saying a word."
Financial Times - Recommended
"... ¦Mothers and Sons, the sometimes absorbing, somewhat unsatisfying new play by Terrence McNally ¦Without Tyne Daly as Katharine Gerard ¦ the character " and the 90-minute, interval-less play " would have struggled to engage us from the first beat. Neither Will nor, to a lesser extent, Cal, is given as much detail as Katharine. So their interpreters " the boyish Bobby Steggert as Will and the handsome Frederick Weller as Cal " must work hard to persuade us that they are a couple, let alone the happy one that McNally intends. Katharine's unhappiness, paradoxically, provides more satisfaction than the men's domestic bliss."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...That the deepest grief never entirely abates, but rather is internalized and transformed into something less definable (and usually more debilitating), is central to Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons ¦McNally's exploration of this concern is total and compelling, even if the work containing it is not quite. From a theatrical standpoint, that's it, and in a number of ways it's sufficient. Daly is outstanding as Katharine ¦Steggert makes a strong foil to this woman to whom Will feels no connection, and defines the young man as an energetic representative of a culture that could not be further removed from hers ¦Weller, whose delivery is stilted beyond Cal's mere discomfort at the situation, is less convincing, as is Taylor ¦Mothers and Sons falls just short of becoming a play. It's instead a political and social treatise...but not moving or exciting on any other terms. McNally, who's usually adept at giving three-dimensional life to what might otherwise be flat constructs, has foregone doing so here, in favor of making his points about the changing landscape of love, marriage, and family that Katharine is determined to resist."
TheaterMania - Recommended
"...McNally's 20th Broadway play, directed by Sheryl Kaller, is a sequel of sorts to an earlier work ¦Mothers and Sons is really at its best when McNally isn't specifically aiming for the tear ducts, movie-of-the-week style. The play hits its emotional heights when McNally is simply presenting three flawed adults whose individual prejudices stand in their way of true understanding. Steggert, in what's possibly the play's toughest role, does an extraordinary job navigating the sudden tonal shift within ¦Similarly, Weller brings a gut-wrenching honesty to Cal ¦But most of all, the production belongs to Daly, whose work here ranks among her very best."
NewYorkTheater.me - Recommended
"...In Mothers and Sons, ¯ Terrence McNally's well-acted, sometimes touching new play ¦All four performers are first-rate, and do what they can to make their words more than positions. The script is not so much preachy as obvious. The character of Katharine offers some intriguing possibilities. Credit McNally for making her something more than just a bigoted yokel ¦but what little we know about her life makes clear she has always been unhappy. Would that McNally had explored Katharine or his other characters in Mothers and Sons ¯ with the same depth as the characters in some of the other plays in his 50-year career as a playwright ¦"
Broadway World - Recommended
"...Played in one continuous ninety-five minute scene, the lightly humorous, but confrontational drama is a follow-up to McNally's short play, Andre's Mother, where Katharine aloofly observed the memorial ceremony arranged by her son's long-term lover, Cal. In lesser hands, Katharine would come off simply as an obnoxious bigot ¦but Tyne Daly draws you in with the subtle show of loneliness beneath the character's emotional armor. Frederick Weller matches her performance with his sensitive and patient Cal. Under Sheryl Kaller's direction, the two of them share an engaging give and take. While Mothers and Sons doesn't contain much of a narrative to propel the evening, McNally's conversations - poignant, funny, combative - make for a touching evening performed by an excellent ensemble."
