Tv viewers groaned when Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn what kind of a tree she’d be — a sign Dulcy Rogers should have heeded. Her one-woman play begins and ends with the writer/performer striking a dramatic, tree-like pose meant to suggest emotional liberation, but instead makes you think longingly of an ax.
“I Am a Tree” concerns 30-something Claire, whose mentally disturbed mother has been institutionalized for decades, and whose cold scientist father — “Professor Petri Dish,” someone calls him — is cold and uncaring.
Discovering that her mother has three sisters Claire never knew, she visits each looking for answers about her past.
The aunts are all so eccentric they make Auntie Mame look normal: One provides the play’s title, with her claim to be a fig tree. That they’re all played by Rogers — the encounters between them and Claire have her whipping around to deliver both sides of the conversation — suggests not so much virtuosic acting as the idea that Claire may also be headed for the loony bin herself.
The piece, minimally staged by Allan Miller, trots out standard-issue emotional dilemmas. Claire is pregnant, and terrified that her mother’s mental illness might be passed on to her child.
“Every choice I’ve ever made has been motivated by the strongest and most powerful emotion in my body — fear,” declares Claire. Not surprisingly, by the end of the piece she’s managed to overcome this tendency via a cathartic meeting with her mother, who at least remains blissfully silent.
Performing before Neil Patel’s dramatic backdrop, with its bare trees and meaningfully empty picture frames, Rogers delivers her emotional turn at so soft a volume that not even the tinny amplification provides much help.
Though there are some amusing and moving moments here, this “Tree” doesn’t bear much fruit.