Jacki’s a winner as stage mother
STAGE MOTHER JACKI Weaver stars as Maybelline Metcalf in Stage Mother.
She’s a feisty Texan housewife married to Jeb (Hugh Thompson) and choir mistress at her local Southern Baptist church.
A telephone call from San Francisco delivers the news that their gay son Ricky has died from an overdose.
When Maybelline insists on going to his funeral, Jeb is furious.
Both of them had been estranged from their son because of his chosen lifestyle, which means that Maybelline’s reception by Nathan (Adrian Grenier) Ricky’s partner in life and in business is less than welcoming, in contrast to Ricky’s best friend, single mother Sienna (Lucy Liu).
It turns out that Maybelline and Jeb are the ones to inherit Ricky’s business, a drag club alled Pandora’s Box, featuring among others Cheery Poppins (Mya Taylor), Joan of Arkansas (Allister MacDonald) and Tequila Mockingbird (Oscar Moreno).
Maybelline soon sets about remodelling the failing business by encouraging her drag queens to sing rather than lip-sync and involves herself in their often problematic lives.
She really is a stage mother.
She also finds an admirer in a helpful hotel concierge (Anthony Skordi), an antidote to Jeb’s relentless negativity.
Stage Mother is not breaking any new grounds, it follows a fairly predictable arc, but there’s enough schmalz, enough mild conflict, and convincing performances to satisfy, not least by our own Jacki Weaver, although Lucy Liu, Mya Taylor, Allister MacDonald and Oscar Morena are also solid.
The musical numbers, of which there are quite a few, are spirited and occasionally moving.
It’s a Canadian production, directed by gay filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald from a screenplay by Brad Hennig. It was shot in Nova Scotia. It’s not a chore this film - it’s enjoyable on a number of levels - you just skate over the contrived nature of many of the events.