Patty’s maternal relationships with Cecile and Sammy are the play’s sources of conflict (Patty’s offstage husband, Hal, we’re told, is “fine”). The matriarch is little more than an amalgam of stereotypes; that there is truth to them is hardly a revelation. But the play does little to question or disrupt the preconceived notions it assumes New York audiences will have about “an Upper West Side lady” like Patty. If this is a character study, Patty’s pungent, messy center is largely withheld from view. Unfortunately, Cecile is kept at arm’s length from a story in which she seems to have the most compelling inner life.

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Persons: Cecile, Sammy, Hal, we’re, Patty, she’s, “, Perlman, Margot Bordelon, Goldman’s Cecile Locations: York