By Marilyn Lester***How fitting that October is devoted to issues of mental health, including Mental Illness Awareness Week and World Mental Health Day —all relevant to the core of the new play, Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love and Madness, now playing at 59E59 Theaters, produced by the Rubicon Theatre Company and starring Linda Purl. Crazy Mama is a work that explores the deeply personal
journey of a family navigating the devastating impact of paranoid schizophrenia.
The topic is harrowing, but not unique; it’s been effectively probed in powerful films such as The Snake Pit, The Soloist, Frances and others. What’s consequential about Crazy Mama is that it continues to raise consciousness about mental disorders, an area in which progress still desperately needs to be made. The play is based on author Sharon Scott William’s book, Crazy Mama: A Memoir of Love and Madness, depicting growing up with a mother who has had a severe psychotic break. The playwright and husband Anson Williams, who directs, crafted the play as a solo piece, enlisting Purl to star.
Monologists are brave souls to take on consequential solo plays such as I Am My Own Wife, Every 
Brilliant Thing and The Year of Magical Thinking; Crazy Mama takes its place among them and here the spotlight demands commitment like no other. Purl is magnificent as Sharon, the narrator, playing herself as an eight-year old child, plus her brother Spikey, Mama, Daddy and 11 other various characters. It’s a daunting job, but Purl is remarkably successful at the task. She’s aided by a second cast member, the Bluesman, who punctuates the action of the play.
The Bluesman, a blues guitarist ably played by Will Huse, sings and plays excerpts of the Crazy Mama theme song at these various moments in the play. Huse embodies the kind of fellow you might encounter on a porch in a Virginia railroad town, the setting of the play. But the catch is in the sameness of these snippets of music, which ultimately fails to move the story forward and help define its action. A more fully-developed story song would give the play more clarity and gravitas. 
And while compelling, at a run time of 2 hours 5 minutes, Crazy Mama can use tightening—perhaps saying more with fewer characters; there is quite a bit of repetition. The Crazy Mama team might also consider a title less suggestive of a horror trope and more consequential: as a platform for opening public dialogues about mental health, family caregiving and the social stigmas surrounding psychiatric disorders, Crazy Mama is essential theater.
Direction by Anson Williams, although too frenetic at times, does keep the action moving and the pacing grounded. But Purl might appreciate a breather within the demands of her athletic performance. Against a minimalist set of a chair and two box/tables, lighting and projection design by Brian Gale and sound design by Lindsay Jones provide subtle but definitive support for Purl’s tour de force as she takes the journey from fearfulness and shock to acceptance to redemption, anchored by the powerful force of love.
Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love and Madness plays through Sunday, October 18 at 59E59 Theters, 59 East 59th St., NYC
Tickets aye $42 (incl. a $2 fee), available here.
Photos by Carol Rosegg
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