Honor thy mother, no matter what
T HIS solo musical about the descent of the author’s mother into dementia . . . hey, where are you going? Don’t be turned off by its subject: Jonatha Brooke’s affectionate, wellcrafted, surprisingly funny new musical, “My Mother Has Four Noses,” is well worth your attention.
An established popfolk singersongwriter credited with critically acclaimed albums — and a recent song for Katy Perry, “Choose Your Battles” — Brooke easily holds the stage alone as she reminisces about her late mom, Nancy Lee Stone, aka Stoney.
Stoney wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. She was opinionated and loved the circus so much that she moonlighted as a clown, much to her young daughter’s embarrassment. But Brooke loved her, and it doesn’t take long before we do, too. Now, about those noses. Stoney did have four of them — prosthetics she used because most of her face had to be reconstructed after a devastating cancer. It started as a small blemish that she left untreated because, as a Christian Scientist, she believed illness was an illusion.
Only after the tumor had eaten up most of her face did she finally go to a doctor
Her daughter steadfastly supported Stoney during the treatment and recovery. But that was only the beginning of the tough times.
Brooke herself is no longer a Christian Scientist — “When I was 30, I discovered Advil” — and she looks at it with a mixture of amusement and frustration.
But beliefs, lost or otherwise, are just part of the show. “Four Noses,” sensitively directed by Jeremy B. Cohen, is very much about a motherdaughter relationship.
Alternating anecdotes and about 10 intimate chamber songs backed by a guitarist and a cellist, Brooke describes Stoney’s physical and mental degradation. Eventually she moved her mother to her own New York building — an announcement that segues into a song titled “What Was I Thinking?”
“My mother had become the crazy lady screaming down the hall,” Brooke says.
Stoney gets worse and worse, but Brooke avoids pathos. She tells the saddest, most heartbreaking stories with a slightly tense grin, and is always aware of life’s compelling weirdness — as when the night nurse experiences a surreal “reli gious seizure” while Stoney is dying.
By then, you can’t even tell anymore if you’re laughing or crying. Probably because you’re doing both.