After watching Ruth Madoff on “60 Minutes” in 2011,Amanda Peet was inspired.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about her,” she says in the play’s program notes.
“There’s an insane, communal craving—fomented by our media culture—to have access to the private matters of famous people; the more deeply personal, the better,” says Peet, who herself has been in the public eye with roles in “Something’s Gotta Give,” “Syriana” and “The Whole Nine Yards,” in addition to TV and Broadway shows. “The Commons of Pensacola,” making its Midwest premiere as the first play of Northlight Theatre’s 40th season, is her first play.
“Commons,” directed by Robin Witt, follows Judith (Linda Kimbrough), a woman of wealth exiled to a still-quite-nice condo in Florida after her husband’s Madoff-like crimes leave her and her family with only a few dollars in their bank accounts. As Thanksgiving approaches, Judith’s 43-year-old actress daughter Becca (Lusia Strus) comes to visit with her much younger boyfriend, Gabe, played by Erik Hellman.
Things become complicated when Gabe informs Judith that he and Becca would like to give Judith the opportunity to share her side of the story with a docuseries (not a reality TV show, mind you). Then, Judith’s granddaughter, Lizzy (Leah Karpel), a teenager with the vocabulary of a sailor, makes her way down to Florida without her mother’s knowledge. Ali (Lori Myers) does eventually join her daughter in Florida, but quickly leaves, not quite as ready to forgive and forget her father’s crimes and her mother’s possible role in them.
While this show does not have an intermission, it still has two very distinct acts. The first half actually feels like filler, with a health scare and affair to simply pass the time. The play really comes into its own during the second half, when only Judith and Becca are left in Pensacola to come to terms with the direction their lives have taken.
Peet says, “I didn’t set out to write a mother-daughter play or to write about women. I liked the idea of gathering different family members who were, in varying degrees, holding on to a fake narrative about themselves after a tragedy. I liked the idea of being at the point in a fallout where you ask yourself: did I participate, unconsciously or not, in letting this happen?”
“Commons” does end up being a mother-daughter play, but fortunately for audiences, that’s the best part of this production. Every other character, and their story lines, is ultimately unnecessary as Judith and Becca work to come to terms with what their husband and father did and what, if any, role they played in the crime.
“The Commons of Pensacola” runs through October 19 at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Tickets and more information can be found online here.
Photo by Michael Brosilow.
