Anna Moench's Mothers Opens Off-Broadway

The Playwrights Realm opens its production of of Anna Moench's Mothers tonight at the Duke on 42nd Street.

Mothers unfolds amid a socially suffocating Mommy-and-Me-type meet-up where small talk doubles as a ruthless game of parental one-upmanship. But the passive and micro-aggressions deployed in everyday conversation are overlaid by hints that the world beyond this elitist enclave is descending into far less subtle violence. As their bourgeois safe zone abruptly becomes a war zone, all norms dictating characters' social positions — and their means of providing for and protecting their children — are upended beyond recognition. Part probing social satire, part harrowing survival tale, Mothers taps into the primal heartache of raising children in a disintegrating world.

Directed by Robert Ross Parker, the production features Maechi Aharanwa (Ariana), Jasmine Batchelor (Vick), Satomi Blair (Meg), Tina Chilip (Gladys), and Max Gordon Moore (Ty).