THE SILVER CORD at the Theatre at St. Clement's

(Seen June 13, 2013)


Sidney Howard's 1926 drama, THE SILVER CORD, shows its age, with its creaky situations.  It comes across as  a Freudian textbook example of a over-possessive mother.  Mrs. Phelps, constantly manipulating her two sons, is determined that she should be the only woman in her sons' lives.  She goes to extreme measures to destroy the marriage of her older son, and convinces her younger son to break his engagement so that he can remain at home with her.

It's all very melodramatic, And maybe 90 years ago it was a new message about a mother's love.  And everyone plays it to the melodramatic hilt, as though this was real life.

But director Dan Wackerman has added another element.  He has inexplicably cast a man to play Mrs. Phelps.  While this might work in an Oscar Wilde drawing-room comedy, in this case it turns everything into a drag show, which only makes for even more explicit melodrama.