Secrets of a Soccer Mom: a very slight slice of life
Oscar E Moore from the rear mezzanine for Talk Entertainment.com
I appreciate a glass of free champagne and a chair that promises to relieve me of my tensions with a free massage just as much as any Soccer Mom. But it’s not enough to make me appreciate the toils and troubles and tribulations of the three moms on stage at The Snapple Theater Center where SECRETS OF A SOCCER MOM, a new three character slice of life play by Kathleen Clark, is now playing.
On my way to one of the coldest Off-Broadway theatres on Broadway I picked up a copy of Parade from the New York Post with a full page advertisement for “the secret life of a soccer mom”. At first I thought it was an ad for the play. When I discovered it wasn’t I thought - Gee, this must be a real hot topic. I guess, for soccer mom’s, it is. For me, it wasn’t. It’s a very slight play with some comic moments with three lovely ladies playing three winded, whiny, woe begotten stay at home moms aka housewives. But these housewives are not desperate, at least not desperate enough to really do something about their collective mid life crisis. It’s hard to believe that these three friends who love their children to death and spend time on the soccer field together and know each other for quite some time from the PTA have never had the conversations that are brought up in the ninety minutes we get to spend with them.
In three scenes, which are played out on a simple park set of a two tired bleachers in front of a skyscape with ominous clouds and a blooming tree (Lex Liang) we meet Nancy (Nancy Ringham) who loves her kids but wants something more now – to be a photographer. When Lynn (Deborah Sonnenberg) who loves her kids is surprised at this and comments that she’s never seen even one photograph, Nancy spills out her bag of thirty “undeveloped” rolls of film. Those are not the only undeveloped things on the Snapple Center stage. Their co-soccer mom Alison (Caralyn Kozlowski) who loves her kids has a cheatin’ husband and has fantasies of the gym teacher who we collectively discover is married. How crushing it is for her fantasies. How crushing it is for us to watch this drivel directed by Judith Ivey.
Ms. Ivey does do her best under the circumstances: having the moms run up and down the aisles, speaking to offstage characters that we never meet, having them yell at a child climbing a tree or answering a grandmother who couldn’t care less about the game but when her empty and growling stomach will be filled. All these “extras” around the main problem of whether or not to let the kids win the game – then let’s not let them win and finally the moms do win in a simulated soccer game which is the highlight of the evening and their kids are proud. Whew!
I have a feeling that SECRETS OF A SOCCER MOM will have great success in regional and community theatre. Three nice roles for three women on a single set dealing with what other moms can readily relate to is just their cup of tea – or glass of champagne.
In order to make the show more readily available for moms like this there will be some 11 a.m. performances added so that they can drop their kids off, see the play, have a bite to eat (with some discount coupons) and be back in time to pick up the kids. Hopefully they will not feel as disgruntled as the characters and decide to do just what the characters want to do but don’t. That is, to be free. And to do just what they want to do for a change. Perhaps that’s the next installment of Soccer Mom. It might be more interesting.
www.SecretsofaSoccerMom.com
03-06-08
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