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Cycling Past the Matterhorn

Carrie Preston, Brenda Wehle, and Shirley Knight in Cycling Past the Matterhorn (Photo © Joan Marcus)

The word of the week, boys and girls, is reconciliation. After the similarly-themed Fran's Bed and Colder Than Here, in which dying mothers manage to bring their less-than-close clans back into familial harmony, comes Deborah Grimberg's variation Cycling Past the Matterhorn. Like Colder Than Here, we're in not-so-sunny England; but this time, our matriarch Esther (the estimable Shirley Knight) isn't dying -- she's just going blind. And the reconciliation that needs to happen is between herself and her flighty, immature daughter Amy (Carrie Preston), who is determined to run off to America with a boy she just met rather than tend for her ailing mom.

These two aren't exactly estranged, they're just not overly simpatico. Which is understandble. Esther is a master manipulator, and she's always a little too quick with a cutting remark about Amy's lack of style (which is admittedly pretty appalling) or her addiction to cigarettes, and is ready at a moment's notice to blame any of her daughter's shortcomings on having had a forceps placed on her during birth. On the plus side, she's far more supportive of Amy's fledgling career as a psychic than a lot of mothers would be. Still, when Amy does make one of her infrequent visits home -- after having just moved out into her own flat -- there's a deafening silence between them that is only interrupted by the blare of the telly or the crunch of a cookie.

Grimberg has a decent enough ear for dialogue and a fairly clever way with a quip, but her talents seem more suited to sitcoms than serious drama. She relies far too much on characters breaking the fourth wall, not to mention talking to each other even though they're not in the same place, rather than seeking honest solutions to the issues of exposition. More importantly, she needs to increase the tension between her main characters if this set-up is to be more affecting and less predictable.

Yes, Esther has been abandoned by Martin, her husband of 37 years, who's taken up with a flight attendant who's only four years older than his daughter. And other than Amy, her only child, Esther's family consists solely of her also-divorced sister Anita (the brilliantly sardonic Brenda Wehle), who is more than willing to look after her soon-to-be-disabled sibling but nevertheless lays a guilt trip on Amy that any Jewish mother would be proud of.

But does Amy really need to stay? Esther is only 56, and in Knight's maybe too-capable hands, she hardly seems the type to shrivel up and die just because she's lost her sight. In fact, when faced with the prospect of imminent blindness, she not only starts going to the gym, but takes up bicycling for the first time in her life and weeks later is on a trip to Switzerland (hence the show's title). One gets the feeling if she could do that, than she can probably learn Braille in a week. And is Amy, who is skillfully played by Preston, really so selfish in not wanting to give up her dreams of happiness -- no matter how vague or misguided -- and spend the next 30 years living with her mother, as Anita suggests?

Having created three reasonably interesting female characters, Grimberg further dilutes her work's potential by throwing two more people in the mix for less-than-maximal effect: Doug, Amy's American beau, is so underdeveloped -- we never even learn how old he is or what hoes he do for a living -- that he becomes completely superfluous as a character. (Fortunately, Ben Fox is so adorable that it compensates somewhat for the cipherness of his part.) And while Nina Jacques beautifully etches Joanne, a desperate-for-a-husband, 40-year-old gal who is Amy's main client, the character's significance in the scheme of things isn't really clear. Perhaps she's meant to be some sort of ghost-of-Amy's future if she doesn't go off with Doug. Or maybe she's just semi-comic relief.

Grimberg, who directed this play when it was presented at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2003, may have been wise to hand over the reins to someone else, but perhaps it shouldn't have been Eleanor Holdridge. Her credits list a great deal of Shakespeare productions around the country, and Holdridge may be more comfortable dealing with larger-scale epics than this small-scale play. Much of Cyling Past the Matterhorn is disturbingly inert, with the characters mostly seated at one of the two tables that make up the bulk of Beowulf Borrit's neutral-toned set.

Like the flawed Fran's Bed and Colder Than Here, which provide showcases for the luminous Mia Farrow and the extraordinary Judith Light, Cycling Past The Matterhorn is to be appreciated for bringing another great actress back to the stage. Perhaps next time, Knight can find a play more worthy of her talents.

 

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