This solo musical about the descent of the author’s mother into dementia . . . hey, where are you going?
Don’t be turned off by its subject: Jonatha Brooke’s affectionate, well-crafted, surprisingly funny new musical, “My Mother Has Four Noses,” is well worth your attention.
An established pop-folk singer-songwriter credited with critically acclaimed albums — and a recent song for Katy Perry, “Choose Your Battles” — Brooke easily holds the stage alone as she reminisces about her late mom, Nancy Lee Stone, a k a Stoney.
Stoney wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. She was opinionated and loved the circus so much that she moonlighted as a clown, much to her young daughter’s embarrassment. But Brooke loved her, and it doesn’t take long before we do, too.
Now, about those noses.
Stoney did have four of them — prosthetics she used because most of her face had to be reconstructed after a devastating cancer. It started as a small blemish that she left untreated because, as a Christian Scientist, she
believed illness was an illusion.
Only after the tumor had eaten up most of her face did she finally go to a doctor.
Her daughter steadfastly supported Stoney during the treatment and recovery. But that was only the beginning of tough times.
Brooke herself is no longer a Christian Scientist — “When I was 30, I discovered Advil” — and she looks at it with a mixture of amusement and frustration.
But beliefs, lost or otherwise, are just part of the show. “Four Noses,” sensitively directed by Jeremy
B. Cohen, is very much about a mother-daughter relationship.
Alternating anecdotes and about 10 intimate chamber songs backed by a guitarist and a cellist, Brooke describes Stoney’s physical and mental degradation. Eventually she moved her mother to her own New York building — an announcement that segues into a song titled “What Was I Thinking?”
“My mother had become the crazy lady screaming down the hall,” Brooke says.
Stoney gets worse and worse, but Brooke avoids pathos. She tells the saddest, most heartbreaking stories with a slightly tense grin, and is always aware of life’s compelling weirdness — as when the night nurse experiences a surreal “religious seizure” while Stoney is dying.
By then, you can’t even tell anymore if you’re laughing or crying. Probably because you’re doing both.