REVIEW: "MoM: A ROCK CONCERT MUSICAL" @ PTNJ

At the opening chords, I was prepared to dislike MoM: a Rock Concert Musical. Oh, I know, a critic shouldn’t approach a show with preformed opinions, but hey, I had just seen a blockbuster production of Hairspray, with its gy-normous production numbers and loud music, so the five 40-something chicks standing on the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey stage didn’t look—or sound—very promising. Even worse, the name these gals chose for their group, MoM, wasn’t at all cool. Things dramatic didn’t look, or sound, too good.

Well, by the time the second act rolled around, I had completely forgotten that these actresses were playing a quintet of suburban women following their dreams of becoming rock stars. I had totally bought into the proposition this group was a real rock band, real women with back stories and relationships revealed through their lyrics and asides to the audience. And the name, MoM, didn’t seem so dorky by the end of the play. After all, when it comes right down to it, they were Moms!

As the second show of the 2010-2011 season (the first was Lost Boy Found at Whole Foods, in collaboration with Premiere Stages), Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey has produced something completely different, something even this company that produces edgy, unusual plays has never done before: a musical! To celebrate the company’s silver anniversary, Artistic director John Pietrowski selected MoM: a Rock Concert Musical, a play with book, lyrics and music by Richard Caliban that came to PTNJ’s attention in a 2009 Fringe NYC workshop and is receiving its world premiere (under Caliban’s direction) at the black box theater in Madison, where it runs through October 24.

In a nutshell, the plot involves a disparate group of women who have in common the fact that they are suburban mothers and (ex-)wives with unfulfilled dreams. The women represent a cross-section of any upscale town in northern New Jersey: a single mother/music teacher (Nancy), the bored wife of a celebrity cellist (Ingrid), a buttoned-up newcomer who sings in the church choir (Catalina), a would-be songwriter who’s a bit of a “stick in the mud” (Karen) and a woman with “issues” (Melissa). From their debut concert at the Jefferson High School fund raiser to a rock club in Cleveland to a large outdoor arena somewhere in Japan and back to the Jefferson High School gym, MoM: a Rock Concert Musical traces the arc of their fame, through their lyrics, their look and their relationships with each other, with their children and with their spouses (or partners, as the case may be).


So how do dramatic actresses present themselves as rock stars? Well, first of all, each of these women can sing. Even better, they all play a variety of instruments well enough to sound like a rock band! And best of all, they convince us that they are the women they portray, different from and so like those of us in the audience.

Jane Keitel is Nancy, the ostensible leader of the band, the music teacher-single mom whose dad told her not to quit her day job. Keitel’s Nancy morphs from a hippy-ish chick in jeans to a hot momma dike rocker, playing a mean guitar and swinging her hair around in the air. Looking like a Desperate Housewife of Somewhere, Dana Loren McCoy puts aside the morning massages, art classes, lazy lunches and matinees of a “Lady of Leisure” enjoyed by the wife of a legendary cellist to follow her dream of becoming a someone in her own right. As saint-like Catalina (referred to disparagingly as Miss Rosary Beads by Melissa), Stefanie Seskin lets us in on her dirty little secret: instead of righteous husband Michael, she really wants a “big ol’ cowboy” who’ll make her sigh as they “roll on the floor and tear up the damn place.” And although Donna Jean Fogel’s drummer Karen protests that she doesn’t have a problem at home (her husband Ben takes care of everything because “he likes to be in charge”) and she isn’t interested in the partying, drinking and drugging the other girls do, she admits that she sticks around because she gets to write the songs, something she’s done ever since she was nine years old. Bekka Lindstrom as Melissa is, perhaps, the most interesting of the five. She wants to ditch a life where her kids and husband cramp her style to “run wild,” and her unresolved issue involves her sexuality.

Yes, the music is loud and the lyrics are sometimes difficult to understand, but the human stories are very clear. To attain their dreams, the MoMs change their look, indulge in alcohol and drugs, change their large white underpants for sexier thongs, let their mouths run in the gutter and, in general, learn that “the road to Funkytown has a lot of potholes” in it. By the time eight years has gone by, they’ve realize that they “had to become teenager[s] again in order to grow up,” and one of them had to nearly kill herself to find her self.

From long skirts, mom jeans, goofy tee shirts emblazoned with their logo to leather shorts and mini-skirts, ripped tights and ratty hair, the terrific costumes designed by Sarah Cubbage chart the journey taken by these women. Drew Francis has used projections on three screens to set the four scenes, and Jeff Knapp’s sound sounds like a real rock concert, complete with squealing mikes and raspy guitars.

By now, I guess you know that I really liked MoM: a Rock Concert Musical. Even though, at a “certain” age, I really don't like today’s rock music (too loud, too obscene, meanings too obscure), human stories never lose their appeal. The Greek dramatists forced their audience to look inside themselves; so does Richard Caliban and the actors at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey. We may not always like what we see, but face it we must. And deal with it.

MoM: A Rock Concert Musical will be performed through October 24 Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM; Sundays at 3 PM; and Thursdays, October 7 at 6:30 PM, October 14 at 3 PM and October 2 at 8 PM. Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey is located at 33 Green Village Road in Madison. Tickets are $25 adults; $22.50 seniors; and $15 Students. The play is appropriate for ages 16 and up because of its adult language and situations. For information and tickets, call the box office at 973.514.1787, ext. 10, or online at http://www.ptnj.org/ .