Meet the Collavechios: Maria (Caroline Aaron) and Bobby (Matt Doyle), the cast of Matthew Lombardo’s Conversations with Mother.
Matthew Lombardo wrangles comedy out of a story that is often not comical—wisecracks can be hard to resist coming from a wisecracking pro like Caroline Aaron—but both the humor and pathos in his new play Conversations with Mother are calculated and shallow.
Bobby (Doyle) takes a bartending job to make rent and is still working there seven years later.
Aaron costars opposite Matt Doyle in the semi-autobiographical two-hander, composed of 13 scenes spanning 1966 to the present. She portrays Maria Collavechio, a Catholic homemaker in Connecticut; he is Bobby, her gay son who grows up to be a playwright.
Conventional Italian mother of six and her “free-spirited son,” as he’s described in the show’s marketing—a combination that augurs comedy full of culture clashes, parental disapproval and ethnic stereotypes. But that isn’t where Conversations with Mother goes. Maria is aware of Bobby’s sexual orientation from a young age and unfazed by it. The only suggestion of the family’s Italian heritage is that all their friends and neighbors have a last name ending in o or i (and, perhaps, that Maria walks on stage holding a wooden spoon).
Rather, the main conflict in Conversations with Mother is Bobby’s behavior, namely a drug addiction he battles most of his adult life, even relapsing after years of sobriety. He’s hung up on a cheating, abusive boyfriend, and Maria has to bail Bobby out—literally from jail, but by paying his bills and debts over the years. So this comedy’s subject matter isn’t exactly comedic (at one point Bobby says, “I just want to die”), and the play makes a late turn straight into schmaltz.
Because of the tonal imbalance, Conversations with Mother doesn’t hold together. It sends up Maria as hotheaded and overprotective, but is that fair when her son gives her much cause for concern? Lombardo wants to have fun with how parents and children butt heads, but Bobby’s problems aren’t merely a difference in opinion from his mother. And the push-pull of their relationship arises not just from him asserting his independence but from him dropping out of sight while on a bender. The script also glosses over details about Bobby’s life, so it doesn’t provide a satisfying feel for who he is beyond what he’s saying and doing at the particular moments depicted onstage.
Maria (Aaron) manages to have a good time visiting her son in rehab. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
The gay kid–versus–churchgoing mom setup does produce one genuinely funny exchange in Conversations with Mother, regarding Bobby’s choice of words to describe getting dressed for altar-boy service, but most of the other jokes are hackneyed or all in the delivery. This is evident from the opening scene, when 8-year-old Bobby keeps begging his mom to let him come home from camp. She shoots down every one of his tearful requests with an abrupt “No!” until he excitedly tells her about a counselor who “asked me to stay with him in his van overnight.” Her abrupt reply, “Get packed! You’re coming home!” gets the first big laugh of the evening, as if it’s one of Maria’s hilarious overreactions to save a child from a guy in a van with candy and toys.
Maria’s conduct seems to be determined mainly by what can get a laugh. For such a devoted matriarch, she’s strangely hostile to her grandchildren—the better to zing them. In a running gag, she sticks the word the where it’s not needed (“the AIDS”). Several jokes depend on her not knowing something—she uses the word “playwriter” instead of “playwright,” and thinks an open relationship is when “you don’t close the doors in your apartment”—even though she’s savvy enough to quip, “A gay man working in the theater is getting help for a drug problem? Shocker!”
Mother and son don’t always see eye to eye.
Conversations with Mother is designed to be a crowd-pleaser, and judging from the audience’s reaction, it succeeds at that. Both Aaron and Doyle, however, seem a little off their game. Aaron is one of TV’s most reliable purveyors of pushy, outspoken mother figures—most notably, and recently, the mother-in-law on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel—and Doyle won a 2022 Tony for playing a self-destructing gay man (“Getting Married Today”) in Company. But here their performances feel forced, perhaps because much of the humor is forced.
In this fairly simple production, Doyle and Aaron change clothes a few times and move a table and chairs on and off the bare stage as needed. Projections announce the year of each scene, though their other uses are not so prudent. A montage of uncomfortably close shots of people smoking meth pipes lets the audience know Bobby has relapsed, and the last scene features a backdrop of a wide open field, which is not where the scene takes place—and which might make you wonder why Bobby doesn’t run for cover when a thunderstorm begins.
Conversations with Mother runs through May 11 at Theater 555 (555 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Monday and Wednesday through Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. Thursday, Saturday and Sunday; conversationsplay.com.
Playwright: Matthew Lombardo
Director: Noah Himmelstein
Sets: Wilson Chin
Costumes: Ryan Park
Lighting: Elizabeth Harper
Sound: John Gromada
Projections: Caite Hevner
