'Family Secrets' at Theater J: Playing With a Full House
By Nelson Pressley
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Watching Sherry Glaser shuffle around in a padded three-piece suit, impersonating a dyspeptic accountant who doesn't get the crazy world he's living in (starting with his lesbian daughter), it's easy to see why her "Family Secrets" was a long-running phenomenon off-Broadway.
For starters, Glaser's an excellent technician, playing five beautifully realized characters who are related to each other, for better and for worse. But as nifty as it is to watch her metamorphose from accountant to crazy housewife to furious, headbanging teenager -- and she executes all these transformations before the audience, usually while singing -- the most winning thing is its spirit.
"Family Secrets," which opened Sunday night at Theater J, is a rarity: a genuinely warm, deeply funny show.
Glaser, who has said the material is based "96 percent" on her own Jewish family, clearly has a love-hate relationship with the people she portrays. But what family doesn't have such relationships? And empathy eventually gets the upper hand, often in the wake of jokes that range from schmaltzy to surprisingly hilarious.
The scene about childbirth is particularly vivid and loaded with laughs.
Playing the bisexual Fern, a character based on herself, Glaser staggers heavily as the contractions arrive and she finds creative ways to describe the pain.
"Now I understand why women die in childbirth," Fern pants. Beat, and then the kicker: "It's preferable."
Some viewers might be most drawn to Rose, the old woman unexpectedly in the throes of a late-life romance (Glaser plays her in a stiff-jointed crouch; sitting and getting up are adventures). Or to Bev, Mort's wife, whose easy laugh has a slightly demented edge. Bev had a breakdown that, in its deeply domestic setting (it happened over dinner), is quietly spectacular. The technician in Glaser perhaps peaks during this portrayal, as the story takes a surprising turn and leaves you hearing that laugh with a good deal of compassion.
Glaser wrote the show with her late husband, Greg Howells, and premiered it off-Broadway more than a decade ago.
Bob Balaban directed a New York revival last year, and that's the calm, casually paced production on view at Theater J. Nothing is forced, and from the moment the lights come up on Mort -- quietly honking "Uh-huh" into a telephone and performing a bit of hygiene on his nose -- the performance encourages close listening and attention to detail (even the disgusting ones).
And although it's not flamboyant, there seems to be something almost magical in how Glaser pulls costumes from a rack and fine-tunes each new look in front of a mirror as we watch.
She brings us into her ritual of bringing herself into her family, and it's key to the show's appeal. In "Family Secrets," Glaser is becoming in every way.
