RedBird Theater Company THE VELOCITY OF AUTUMN Review

The lead character, 80 year-old artist Alexandra (played by Lenore Field,) has holed up in her home and barricaded her adult children from entering. Ever clutching an explosive, she is threatening to blow the place up if they tread on her and try to move her to a senior facility.

We meet the unlikely mediator, her son Chris (played by David Berberian), as he struggles thru the window to spill on the floor. He is a variant of the prodigal son— long gone from his stifling family where he just didn’t fit in. He wants to defuse the situation— literally and figuratively. In the dialogue that ensues, we learn about Chris’ prior need to move away from his family, his mother’s ambivalence about mothering and later about her own art. All of this revisiting of the past is the prelude to Alexandra’s looming final chapter. Mortality is always in the air.

The strong appeal of Coble’s script—in this reviewer’s opinion— is that he creates unique one-off characters —mother and son— who give voice to the most universal of life experiences, I.e. the end. Along the way we get sprinkles of witticisms such as Chris quipping that his mother should have made Mother’s Day cards in response to her recounting how much better her life was when they, her children, finally went off to school. You too might agree that Berberian’s performance shows natural instincts for comic timing. That said, this production doesn’t add much to the script.