PLAYBILL ARCHIVES: 'night Mother — 1983

By Ernio Hernandez
14 Nov 2004

Playbill cover for 'night, Mother in 1983.
Playbill cover for 'night, Mother in 1983.

(This is one in a series of Playbill On-Line features offering a periodic look back at Broadway and Playbill history, timed to accompany a new production or event of a show from theatre's past. A Broadway revival of 'night Mother starring Edie Falco and Brenda Blethyn opens Nov. 14 at the Royale Theatre. Here's a glimpse at the 1983 Playbill of the original production, with some perspective on the period.)

Ronald W. Reagan is nearing the end of his first term as President of the United States. NASA prepares its second space shuttle, Challenger, for its maiden voyage next month and its launch of Sally K. Ride as the first U.S. woman in space later this year. American playwright Tennessee Williams and songstress Karen Carpenter recently passed away. "Gandhi," "E.T." and "Monty Python's Meaning of Life" play in movie theaters while Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" play on the radio. Welcome to 1983.

On the Great White Way, early season entries like Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in Foxfire and a new musical called Cats still trod the boards. Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge and Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs with Matthew Broderick have just opened on Broadway when an unlikely Marsha Norman drama with sensitive subject matter comes.

The title page in the 'night, Mother Playbill.

Set in "a house built way out on a country road," according to the setting listed in the Playbill, 'night Mother follows the evening spent between a mother (played by Anne Pitoniak) and daughter (Kathy Bates) following the latter's announcement that she plans to kill herself. Tom Moore directs the drama which opens March 31 at the John Golden Theatre.

Kathy Bates and Anne Pitoniak's headshots.

In the Playbill, among advertisements for cars (the "awesome... and then some" Datsun Turbo ZX or the "full-size" Chevrolet Caprice), cosmetics, furs, airlines, perfumes, cigarettes and plenty of alcohol, is a full-page commemoration to the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams with lines from his plays offset by his own quotes.

A tribute to the late Tennessee Williams.

Editorial featured in the Playbill include a Harry Haun piece on Neil Simon's new work Brighton Beach Memoirs, an interview with Show Boat star Donald O'Connor, the signature At This Theatre column and a "Lost and Found Musicals" focus on Bruce Yeko's Original Cast Records mission to record "flop" musicals.

Art for the "Lost and Found Musicals" feature.

Audiences were haunted by 'night, Mother before they even got to the theatre. "The wonderful colored posters you'd see in advance didn't begin to tell you anything about what the play was about," recalled theatre journalist Charles Nelson. "That ranch-style house on the road about five minutes out of town, somewhere. Just an ordinary house with ordinary people in it and nothing really important is happening. Then, of course after you saw the play, you said that was the most perfect poster in the world." Equally unsettling to Nelson was "You noticed the clock on the wall of the set was a real clock and that the play was running in real time. And when she announced that in 90 minutes, this will all be over, that's what the clock said."

'night, Mother would play 388 performances before closing Feb. 26, 1984. The work was shut out of the Tony Awards that year in every category it was nominated — Foxfire's Jessica Tandy won over both Bates and Pitoniak for Best Actress, Gene Saks' direction of Brighton Beach Memoirs bested Moore's staging and Torch Song Trilogy took home the prize for Best Play. The work would, however, earn the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Drama and later be adapted for the screen.