Saving Kitty, a play by Marisa Smith, at Central Square Theater, Sunday, August 2, 2015. Directed by Lee Mikeska Gardner. Starring Jennifer Coolidge. With Alexander Cook, Lydia Barnett-Mulligan, Lewis D. Wheeler.
A young woman who works as a TV or film producer brings her fiance, a rising evangelical school principle, home to meet her Manhattan parents. They are not happy, the mother is appalled and she works to end the engagement. This is a decent comedy, but the main reason it worked for me is Jennifer Coolidge. We didn't know anything about her film TV work. As the monstrous mother, she imparted a strange magic to her lines and the character. Jokes that really weren't funny became hilarious thanks to her intonation and edge. She was a combination tyrant and vulnerable victim at the same time. It's hard to imagine anybody else doing the role. It was a very good cast, but Coolidge covered over the play's flaws and made it worth seeing.
I have a problem with some of the premises of the play. The young man character (well played by Alexander Cook) is barely realistic as a committed evangelical believer. He gives no sign of actually having any faith, at least none that is much different from the others around him (which is to say none). But the real problem is the mother, Kate Hartley. We are meant to believe that she lives by the liberal values of wealthy Manhattan. But that's not what we see. We see a bigoted, crass, neurotic blowhard from the very start. That she objects to her daughter's choice of an evangelical believer seems irrelevant -- her reactions and behavior didn't really make sense to me.
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