Our Mother's Brief Affair
Closed 2h 0m
Our Mother's Brief Affair
66

Our Mother's Brief Affair NYC Reviews and Tickets

66%
(161 Ratings)
Positive
52%
Mixed
31%
Negative
17%
Members say
Great acting, Disappointing, Slow, Funny, Clever

About the Show

Manhattan Theatre Club presents the NY premiere of Richard Greenberg's new play starring Linda Lavin as a mother with a shocking secret that threatens her children.

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Show-Score Member Reviews (161)

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134 Reviews | 18 Followers
75
Great acting, Funny, Linda lavin is great to watch anytime.

See it if you love Linda Lavin

Don't see it if you need to see a great play.

158 Reviews | 201 Followers
75
Cool surprise twist

See it if You are enjoy family drama and dysfunction theater...it's subtle and has a cool Cold War type surprise twist that I enjoyed

Don't see it if You are looking for big production value and fast paced story

106 Reviews | 14 Followers
75
Disappointing, Overrated, Banal

See it if family drama

Don't see it if repeating of his previous shows

85 Reviews | 104 Followers
75
Ambitious, Great acting, Great writing, Indulgent, Original

See it if you love Linda Lavin and if you love history. There are some great references here. Also a really touching story about aging parents.

Don't see it if you aren't compelled by straight forward historical story telling.

184 Reviews | 30 Followers
75
Clever, Funny, Great staging, Entertaining, Delightful

See it if you've had a complicated relationship with your mother and wondered why.

Don't see it if your sitting next to your parents.

336 Reviews | 46 Followers
71
Great acting, Entertaining, Slow

See it if you don't mind slow moving shows

Don't see it if you're into hysterical comedies

297 Reviews | 78 Followers
70
Delightful, Confusing, Entertaining, Funny, Disappointing

See it if you ever worshiped @ the Linda Lavin altar. STILL magnificent. But the show is confusing, & the end's one of the worst let-downs in theater.

Don't see it if dementia/alzheimers theme will mess w/you. About family, w/some unknowns & surprises exposed. The abrupt ending destroyed the whole show.

711 Reviews | 252 Followers
70
Banal, Cliched, Indulgent, Great acting, Romantic

See it if You love Linda Lavin no matter how weak the material, or if you're an aging Upper East Sider.

Don't see it if You can't stand listening to rich white New Yorkers' problems.

Critic Reviews (52)

DC Theatre Scene
January 22nd, 2016

"The biggest surprise is how much the play feels like a first draft for a better play…or notes for several other plays...The play feels as if it was written too quickly, that it is a work in progress...Only about half of these jokes land — the others simply are neither funny nor even smart – and this is a symptom of the problem with the play as a whole...If the play is undernourished dramatically, it also feels overstuffed with (underdeveloped) ideas. At the same time, too much comes off as filler."
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The Clyde Fitch Report
January 20th, 2016

"Richard Greenberg’s new spin on a dysfunctional family, 'Our Mother’s Brief Affair,' isn’t brief enough. It’s so far below the level of his other plays that the mind nearly boggles...I need to state that in order to specify how boring — not to say barely this side of reprehensible — 'Our Mother’s Brief Affair' is, I’m going to have to cough up a major spoiler in a few paragraphs. I don’t see any way around it. For that, I offer the apology that Greenberg should offer us."
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The Guardian (UK)
January 20th, 2016

"The playwright Richard Greenberg has a flair for middle-class aphorisms...If this were enough to sustain the two-hour’s traffic of our stage, then 'Our Mother’s Brief Affair' would be scintillating stuff. It is not. Unfocused, anemic and astonishingly trivial, this drama of family and memory has somehow found its way to Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway berth...It’s hard to imagine an affair torrid enough to shake up a play this smug."
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Times Square Chronicles
January 22nd, 2016

"I found this quiet play so moving...Mr. Greenberg's play is not perfect, but it is thought provoking and contains one terrific performance by Ms Lavin. Santo Loquasto’s beautiful set is wonderfully lit by Peter Zaczorowski."
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The Wrap
January 20th, 2016

"Neither the petulant performances by Kate Arrington and Greg Keller nor the arch writing by Greenberg is compelling. The five-minute history lesson, however, mesmerizes because the bare facts continue to astound more than a half century later...Likewise, character traits are thrown out and dismissed...'Affair' is nearly a drama-less drama. Nearly every conflict presented is resolved by someone on stage telling us how it is resolved."
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The Huffington Post
January 20th, 2016

"Another geriatric comedy--of the genre popularly known as 'the Linda Lavin play'--pleasantly steaming along, courtesy of heavy lifting by Linda Lavin herself. Suddenly, a big mystery emerges; without said big mystery, there'd be little upon which to build the second act...If Mr. Greenberg was attempting to give us something with socio-politico-historical import, he has not convincingly done so. Seekers of Jewish mother comedy, though, should be more than content."
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B
January 31st, 2016

"No one knows how to pander to a MTC audience better than Richard Greenberg. String together some witty one-liners, throw in a Jewish matron, add a few Yiddish words, mention Great Neck at least once and, voila, MTC awaits with open arms...And so we now have this strange lumpy play...Anna is so unsympathetic and her adult children so emotionally stunted that it is hard to develop much concern for them."
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Arts in LA
January 24th, 2016

"You can hear the proverbial pin drop as Lavin carefully takes the audience into Anna’s mind...It’s a beautiful, heart-stopping moment, but it’s not enough to save an otherwise meandering, anemic work...Greenberg spends too much time telling rather than showing...MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow gives the play an efficient but passionless staging."
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