I Remember Mama
Opening Night: March 16, 2014
Closing: April 20, 2014
Theater: The Gym at Judson
Following Transport Group’s 2011 production of Queen of the Mist, their 20th Century Project continues into its second decade (1910 – 1920) with an urgent new revival of John Van Druten’s beloved classic, I Remember Mama. Redefining family, time, and memory, Transport Group’s production features a cast of ten veteran powerhouse actresses who play all twenty-five roles. This bold reinterpretation of Van Druten’s simple and honest story reveals how even the smallest and seemingly insignificant experiences of family life can silently accumulate and take our breath away.
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March 30, 2014
Watching a memory play like John Van Druten’s I Remember Mama feels like looking through someone else’s family album. You nod and smile without feeling a real connection to the people in the pictures. Fortunately, Transport Group Theatre Company has added interest to Van Druten’s somewhat dated play about an immigrant Norwegian family by casting 10 female Broadway veterans in the roles of the play’s two dozen characters — men and children included. The troupe also wisely chose as its venue The Gym at Judson, whose stage suits the wide expanses of memory.
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March 28, 2014
The Transport Group’s take on John Van Druten’s I Remember Mama, opening Sunday, promises to be one that sticks in the brain. Then again, memorably adventurous and innovative interpretations have become par for the course for the company over the past dozen years. The troupe has done an age-reversed Our Town (the stage manager was a 12-year-old actress) and an environmental The Boys in the Band (the show took place in a W. 26th St. loft that put you thisclose to the stormy drama). Now the company’s artistic director, Jack Cummings III, has a doozy of an idea for Van Druten’s 1944 drama.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 28, 2014
Ten women in their 70s play all the members of the Hanson family, all except two taking on several roles! No wigs or costumes! The story unfolds with the characters sitting around large dining room tables, each set with different props and representing a room in the Olson’s San Francisco home! The lights on and dimmed only at at the end of each act! The Mama of Jack Cummings III’s revival of I Remember Mama is certainly not the one you’re likely to remember. Depending on your age, that would be the 1940s Broadway hit, the TV series, or the still available DVD movie. Your memory of Mama Olson might even be based on John Van Druten’s inspiration for his play, Katherine Forbes’ fictionalized memoir Mama’s Bank Account. But if you’ve been following Mr. Cummings’ Transport Group, you’ll recognize this re-conceptualized, entertaining if a tad gimmicky approach as yet another example of the company’s mission of "visually progressive productions of emotionally classic stories" that remain true to the the source script.
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March 30, 2014
The tables in the basement have been laid for reminiscence. There are 10 of them, solid wooden furniture, covered with the detritus you find at estate sales: glassware, china, bibelots, books, even a cache of manual typewriters. It’s the sort of display that makes you think about your own inventory of passed-down possessions, of the lives these discarded objects might have led and of the absent owners who once animated them. Thus is the mood set for the Transport Group’s shyly charming revival of John van Druten’s I Remember Mama, which opened on Sunday night at the Gym at Judson in Greenwich Village. Those tables become the command stations for 10 actresses who are also of a certain vintage. Born in the 1930s and ’40s, they collectively embody several centuries of stage experience. You’ll recognize many of their faces, even if their names don’t come to mind as readily. Two of them appeared on Broadway in the rock shocker Hair four decades ago; another created the role of the girl in The Fantasticks, the death-defying Off Broadway musical, in 1960.
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