Review: Oh, Honey and the Mothers of Men Accused of Sexual Assault

In retrospect, it should have been obvious that American women would largely reject the #MeToo Movement, especially when it seemed to threaten the very people charged with bearing their DNA, family name, and wealth into the next generation—their sons. Donald Trump understood that and capitalized on the disconnect between elite manners and popular sentiment way back in 2018. He knew that in most cases moms would back their own flesh and blood, even if they privately believed their progeny to be rapists.

Jeana Scotti’s fascinating (if flawed) play, Oh, Honey, explores why that is. It’s about a support group for mothers of college-age sons who have been accused of sexual assault. Carsen Joenk’s intimate site-specific production is now receiving a return engagement at the Brooklyn restaurant Little Egg. It offers a voyeuristic peek into their Monday lunch meetings.

Sarah (Mara Stephens instantly conveying a gray cloud of a person) is consistently the first one at the table, giving her a chance to remind server Mari (Carmen Berkeley) of her preference for agave sweetener (dietary peculiarities are a running theme). Iliana Paris costumes her in a pilly green duster, giving the impression of a permanent sick day.

She is soon joined by Lu (Dee Pelletier), a school principal brimming with sage advice concerning university bureaucracy (“get a lawyer before shit hits the fan”) who maintains an aggressive posture toward the waitstaff. Sarah is particularly close with Bianca (Jamie Ragusa, sweetness masking percolating bitter coffee). The two hang out alone and have shared indiscreet confessions over a bottle of wine. Sarah is somewhat threatened by the newest, youngest lady who lunches, Vicki (Maia Karo, jovially embodying a chatty dental hygienist). A moderator of their online forum, she’s still a newbie. “She could be trying to get a news story, you don’t know,” observes the ever-guarded Lu.

Not that they ever delve too deeply into the specifics of their sons’ cases. Instead, they chat about jobs, coffee, gluten, and The Real Housewives. Only when one of the women excuses herself to the restroom do they dish. Occasionally, someone makes a sexist joke, and they cackle in unison.

Later, they gaze into a glowing bowl of soup like it’s a cauldron and ask, “When will it be my turn?” as if they’re beseeching the devil himself. Attilio Rigoti’s lighting flickers and a sinister tone invades his soundscape. Pelletier, who has long been one of the most intense and bewitching actors in New York, especially makes a meal out of this sudden slide into the supernatural. It’s hard not to conclude that this play is trafficking in one of the oldest forms of misogyny.

But, as long as Scotti is admitting that sisterly solidarity is largely a feminist fiction, she might as well show the many ways women oppress other women, which Oh, Honey does vividly and persuasively. This is not just in the reflexive habit of the moms to gossip, but in the way these older women with wealth lord over the youngest woman onstage, who does not. Berkeley’s Zen-like calm, her theatrically helpful eyes and dam-like smile holding back a deluge of rage and sadness, will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever worked a service job.

Of course, this coven would like to believe it uses its powers to benefit women like Mari, like when they chase off a suspicious male customer (Lucas Papaelias’s deer-in-headlights expression really makes this moment). We get the sense that they’re compensating for something.

All of these component moments are individually plausible, and this excellent cast knocks them out of the park, but it’s the wind-up (how one event logically leads to the next) that often strains credulity: Sarah makes an impulsive Facebook post, which she quickly attempts to delete only to discover one of her most zealous followers has already commented on it. We never quite buy her reasoning for making the post in the first place, but it does get us to one of this play’s most shatteringly honest lines.

“Sarah you’re entertainment for her,” Bianca tells her with Judge Judy exasperation. “You’re her Real Housewives.” And there it is, the schadenfreude that drives a society awash in potential elites, the need to see the competition fall on its face so that you might dream of winning the race.

For all its dramaturgical contrivance, Oh, Honey feels like a much-needed wake-up call for an American theater that has too long deluded itself about how people truly think about identity—not as a cherished trait that carries equal weight on a menu of other intersectional identities, but as a weapon to be wielded in the perpetual battle to ensure that you and your kin come out on top.