Moral Support

See it if If you want to see a show about dysfunctional families.

Don't see it if Needs a lot of work. A 51 was generous. Plot and story are not good. Acting so so.

See it if you collect stories about desperately, destructively unhappy families.

Don't see it if you like your dramas dramatic: This one is all talk, & that talk is about hurt that occurred years ago.

Also I rarely score any show below 60. I feel that avid theatergoers can learn a lot even from plays they don’t very much like. I don’t think I learned a thing from this one, & the only strong emotion it elicited was a wish to be elsewhere. The set, a sparely furnished domestic kitchen-&-living-room combo, is almost aggressively ugly. On the night I saw it the actors had trouble with their (non-memorable) lines. Though the play is about a family that destroys its own, the war ended several years ago. All that’s left for this play to do is pick at the scabs in a series of sour conversations, mostly about the bad old days, that never rise to drama, even when alcohol-fueled altercations break out. And then, though nothing has happened to earn it, we end on a hug & a hollow reconciliation.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to support the cast - some good moments, but not enough to carry this play.

Don't see it if you want a good drama on family troubles and how they are resolved. This play meanders with uneasy scene changes and too many monologues.

See it if Post mortem of a dysfunctional family delivered by various family members in self-justifying monologues.

Don't see it if When stressed, a dysfunctional family becomes more dysfunctional.

See it if You are intetested in stories about dysfunctional families, addictions and abuse and you do not mind somewhat disjointed storylines.

Don't see it if You prefer well crafted plots and carefully developed characters or are sensitive to topics of abuse, addiction or dysfunctional families.

See it if You want to see a play about family dysfunction and how it can come back to bite you. You don't mind simple staging and family drama.

Don't see it if You are not interested in hearing about family problems. You don't like small theater productions.

See it if if you want to see how abusers use guilt and love to victimize.

Don't see it if you want to know something that you didn't know walking into the theatre. It you want some redemption for the victim.

Also The story of completely dysfunctional family and the child who cannot walk away from it when he becomes a man.

I think we all know that the "gingerbread man" had the right idea, most victims don't use it, but that is no reason to celebrate the victim's actions in theater.

There is one short scene in the 90 minute production when you think the author might redeem himself, but you are almost immediately disappointed.... Read more Read less

See it if You're into very slow, very depressing drama

Don't see it if You want a feel good experience

See it if you like explorations of family trauma, non-traditionally structured plays, prose like dialogue. Mixing of structures.

Don't see it if You mind stilted and unrealistic almost narrative dialogue. A plot that seems to get lost by author doesn't seem to know how to finish.

Also Very minor possible spoiler alert:

The play is three parts. A dialogue between an abusive dying mother and her son, a dialogue first between the aunt that replaced the mother and the son and then the alcoholic father and son, and then a monologue by the son that becomes a dialogue between an older son and we have to presume is the spirit of the mother. I think there was potential at the end of the first two dialogue but it wasn't apparent to me or evidently the author what the third act should be. The narrative thread set in the first act (the mother wanting the son to reconnect her with her ex husband) is lost in the second probably because its not believable the son would do such a thing. So instead the son just rehashes the past with the father with major revalations that proceed it being dropped. The third act has nowhere to go after that so it just becomes a very long post-script. I thought Miss Shaw's performance had a lot of potential.... Read more Read less

See it if you like dark comedies

Don't see it if you like happy themes

See it if This show had sone good moments mostly closer to the end,

Don't see it if The show is a bit meandering and gets tedious at times

See it if you like experimental theater (a mix of dialogue, poetry & monologue; realism & surrealism) and relevant, heart-wrenching subject matter.

Don't see it if heart-wrenching subject matter isn't your thing.

Also Wow! It takes awhile to absorb the heavy subject matter of this play. Even if you didn't have a childhood that included (spoiler alert!) abuse and drinking and death, this play will get you thinking about the hell family members can sometimes create for each other (and themselves)—and make you admire the son who escapes it through education, but somehow manages not to hate the parents who weren't up to the task of parenting. There were times when the dialogue felt repetitive, but in a way that is also true to life, because isn't that how families fight? There were strong performances by Cynthia Shaw (the mother) and David A.P. Brown (the father) in particular.

I hope the author works on this further and mounts another production in the future. This play has great potential. I've really never seen anything like it in terms of how accurately it reflects the challenge of emerging from a dysfunctional family.... Read more Read less

See it if you're interested in confessional, poetic theater showing keen psychological insight into the dynamics of a deeply dysfunctional family.

Don't see it if you don't have the stomach for the excruciating emotional pain family members can put each other through.

Also Tolstoy famously said, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This family drama, which one supposes must be based on the author's own childhood, depicts a troubled family coping with alcoholism, domestic violence and serious illness, making for a very specific kind of unhappy family. And yet the themes are also universal to all families, even the most "functional." There was a line I especially loved, something along the lines of "aren't feelings hurt and mended all the time in families?" So true. This play isn't easy to watch, it might make you cry, but it resonates deeply.... Read more Read less