THE OLDEST BOY resonated with me on so many levels – as a mother, as a spiritual human being, as one who is curious about other cultures, as a theater lover who loves plays that revolve around women characters.
Over the course of two hours during this new show by Sara Ruhl, I was introduced to a family torn apart by the husband’s culture after two Buddhist monks appear at the door one day to declare a high-ranking lama, or high Buddhist teacher, has been reincarnated in the body of their son, Tenzin. The monks want permission to take him to a monastery in India, and their struggle and agony begins.
Sounds unusual, right? Yes, it is and in the most delightful way. The play is an exploration of culture, motherhood and major life decisions. While it’s easy to wonder if the mother is dreaming the whole scenario after completing meditation while her son is sleeping before the knock on the door comes, it’s also somehow easy to wonder what you would do in her shoes, had it been you.
In the first half of the play, we find out that the mother quit her job as an adjunct teacher before the birth of their child to care for him. She’s still breastfeeding her three-year old son and putting him in her bed as a proponent of attachment parenting, a phrase coined by pediatrician William Sears and one that I knew a lot about as young mother. According to attachment theory, the child forms a strong emotional bond with caregivers during childhood with lifelong consequences, and she, in turn, reciprocates the affection. Both mothers and children who partake in attachment parenting tend to have trouble separating and develop a strong bond that is hard to break. Her hesitation of letting go of her child is completely understandable.
The plays I’ve seen by Ruhl have all dealt with difficult issues – Dead Man’s Cell Phone was about how disconnected people are in the digital age. In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) was brilliant, about the history of vibrators, developed for use as a treatment for women diagnosed with hysteria. The Clean House was about the disappoints in life (LOVED that show). So of course in this show, we have a the tough issue of a couple having to decide what to do when their son is declared Saint-like. What would you do if faced with the same decision?
Like the lead character, I breastfed and gave up my full time job after the birth of my first child. I slept with her during difficult nights and spent my days doing mommy & me yoga with her. If two monks had come to my door demanding the removal of my child, I would have freaked. But Ruhl carefully weaves in the power of culture into the storyline through the use of music, dance puppetry (there is no real child on stage) and makes us understand that the belief in her child is more powerful than anything in the world and to ignore it would be akin to death. Hence, the second act is spent in India, as we witness their decision. Celia Keenan-Bolger, who plays the mother, is one of my favorite stage actresses, after having seen her in The Glass Menagerie and now this. Her distress and confusion over losing her child is so vivid, so frighteningly emotional and realistic, that tears came to my face. During one scene, we watch her deliver her second child in the monastery in India with no epidural, no doctors and nurses and her surreal pain made me remember being in labor.
THE OLDEST BOY is also a powerful history lesson about Tibet culture which Rebecca Taichman directs beautifully. The wonderful cast also includes Ernest Abuba, Joel de la Fuente, Tsering Dorjee, Takemi Kitamura, James Saito, Jon Norman Schneider, and Nami Yamamoto. The show is in previews and opens on Monday, November 3rd in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street). Tickets to THE OLDEST BOY, priced at $77 and $87, are available at Lincoln Center Theater‘s box office (150 West 65 Street) and telecharge.com, or by visiting www.lct.org. A limited number of tickets priced at $32 are available at every performance through LincTix, LCT’s program for 21 to 35 year olds. For information and to enroll, visit LincTix.org.
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Can’t say I find Ruhl’s soft touch compelling most of the time, but I thought it worked here. She’s at home in the Buddhist realm in a way I don’t think she’s been before.