Fringe Encore Series: How My Mother Died of Cancer, and Other Bedtime Stories

For my 15th and final 2010 Fringe NYC show, I attended the closing night of How My Mother Died of Cancer, and Other Bedtime Stories by Chris Kelly. Kelly has done an admirable job of turning his own tragedy (his mother died of cancer) into art. Though the show is uneven, the old adage it will make you laugh and cry applies here. The humor might make some uncomfortable--laughing at death isn't easy, but it never crosses the line into the offensive.

Kate (Elizabeth Romanski) is staging a play about her mother and she enlists her brother Tim (Jim deProphetis), her father (Mike Boland), her brother's friend Barry (Dylan Kammerer), and her friends Lena (Brianna Tyson) and Trent (Josh Hemphill) to help. Since they aren't actors, they constantly interrupt the show to voice their own opinions. Her father especially has a problem with the way Kate chooses to portray her mother, but he participates anyway because he wants to help his daughter. I identified more with the father and I actually found myself getting increasing angry with Kate's selfish behavior as the play went on, but she was dealing with her grief in the way she knew how and her character rings true.

The cast excels at playing non-actors, with stilted line readings and nervous mannerisms, but Boland steals the show in a scene where he is supposed to act out his last words to his wife and breaks down when he can't remember the lines.

The play goes off on many tangents that sometimes last too long, like a game show "Wheel of Cancer," but the play is at its best when the characters are just talking to each other and not "acting."