Opinion: LeRoy's 'Not Waving. . .'

"Not Waving . . . ," Gen LeRoy's first play, takes its title from a poem by the eccentric British poet and confirmed spinster Stevie Smith:

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

A drama about a released mental patient's campaign to galvanize her aging mother into a life of radical politics, it's pretty far out itself - often thrillingly so.

How gratifying to see a mother-daughter play that doesn't end in a cat fight, and isn't the least bit sentimental, either.

Confront The Truth

We open in a sanitarium, where Gabby (Sloane Shelton) is waiting to spring her problematic daughter, Nicole (Kyra Sedgwick). "I don't get her," Gabby admits to the doctor (Tim Michael).

He's not terribly reassuring: Nicole is a suicidal depressive who jumped out of a window because she was too impatient to wait for her wrist-slashing to work.

Confront this, he counsels. "Truth is power. Denial weakens the healing process."

Cut to a restaurant, where Nicole confides over lunch that she likes shock treatments even though they "take the fun out of dysfunctional."

Confrontations

She tells her mom to lose a little chub and become more assertive, setting an example by raising a ruckus with the restaurant manager (Nancy Jo Carpenter) over the failure of the pizza primavera to live up to its menu blurb.

On to a bus, a day care center, City Hall - mounting confrontations that make Mom long for a little sleep and some quality time with the Weather Channel. Nicole's "one slice short of a loaf," as her ex, Mark (Mr. Michael again), points out, and it's getting to her.

And yet, as her daughter's liberal passions propel Gabby off her couch and onto the barricades, she blossoms into a marvelously gutsy, straight-talking, butt-kicking citizen.

Role Reversal

As Ms. LeRoy says in the program, it's a case of role reversal: Nicole becomes her mother's teacher. Watching the terrific Ms. Shelton's transfiguration is one of the enduring joys of this quixotic evening.

We eventually learn that at the bottom of Nicole's crusade for justice is a deep personal grievance against Mark for getting custody of her cat, Isabella, during their divorce.

With his current wife, Helen (Ms. Carpenter again), he's exploiting Isabella in TV commercials, and Nicole's lawsuit to regain custody has failed in court.

Battle For Isabella

It's the derring-do battle for Isabella that drives the play to its wildly farcical climax and surprisingly moving denouement: a triumph for Gabby that may come too late for Nicole.

An ideal foil for the excellent Ms. Shelton's reactivated Gabby, Kyra Sedgwick is a bundle of charismatic but recklessly hot-wired neuroses. Her dashing Nicole at first is day to Ms. Shelton's night. In a subtly shaded performance, she fills us with sadness.

Ms. Carpenter is also impressive in the roles of "Helen and other women," particularly in the scene where, as Helen, she calls Nicole's bluff.

Tragedy Or Farce?

Mr. Michael, except for a brief, hilarious appearance as a karate instructor, leaves something to be desired as "Mark and other men." So does Chris Smith's rather hit-and-miss direction.

"Not Waving . . ." is a very funny, often moving, but uneven play. Despite many wonderful moments, it can't seem to make up its mind to be a tragedy or a farce, and the emotional battle lines aren't clearly drawn until quite late in the evening.

What's at stake finally comes into focus halfway through the second act in the confrontation between Helen and Nicole, when the play leaps to life, but we need to be hooked much earlier.

Therapy For Two

The performance this reviewer saw was a preview, however. Meanwhile, the rewrites go on, and by tonight, opening night, the problems may well have been solved.

Even if they haven't, "Not Waving" is still a feisty work with lots of heart and some great laughs. It's beautifully acted. It's about offbeat characters we can really root for and deals with an important subject: the mutual rehabilitation of the mentally disturbed and their loved ones. It's well worth seeing for these reasons alone.

"Not Waving . . ." will play at Primary Stages in Manhattan through March 23. It won the Carbonell Award for Best Play at the Pope Theatre in Palm Beach last year, where Ms. Shelton won the award for Best Actress.

The playwright, Ms. LeRoy, is an author of children's and young-adult books and wife of the Tony Award-winning Tony Walton, who designed the clever set. They live in Sag Harbor. Ms. Sedgwick used to spend her summers in East Hampton.