Lisa Kron and Jayne Houdyshell in Well

Lansing's

Lisa Kron has a

Big Apple play

inspired by her

relationship with

her mother.

W

riter and actress Lisa
Kron has told her
mother, Ann Kron, not
to expect any gift for Mother's Day.
The entertainer jokes she already has
been a generous daughter this year
by providing her mom with a place
on the Broadway stage.
That place is as one of two main
characters in Well, a play that gives
a sense of their mother-daughter
relationship.
While the foundation for that pro-
duction is the Kron family's Lansing
household, the piece departs from
reality to make the work theatrically
, striking.
Well explores the effects of chron-
ic illness, which continues to plague
Lansing's Ann Kron — she has
suffered from extreme reactions to
a myriad of allergies for years. Lisa
Kron suffered with similar allergies
until she left home and spent time in
a Chicago allergy clinic before head-
ing to New York City and a career in
the theater. The play also delves into
the family's commitment to keeping

their almost all-black Lansing neigh-
borhood integrated.
Well opens with Lisa Kron, play-
ing a variation of herself, telling the
audience: "This play is not about my
mother and me.... It's not about
how she's been sick for years and
years and years and I was sick as
well but somehow I got better. It's not
about how she was to heal a neigh-
borhood but she's not able to heal
herself" — but it's precisely what the
play is about.
Well opened in March with an
open-ended run at the Longacre
Theatre and received a glowing
review in the New York Times:
"What makes Well much more than
a clever, deconstructed theatrical riff
is the way it keeps surprising itself
with glimpses of an emotional depth,
both murky and luminous, that goes
beyond any tidy narrative
But while critics raved, unfortu-
nately ticket sales have been disap-
pointing. The play closes Sunday,
May 14.
"I like that this play is surprising

to audiences and gives people a very
visceral theater experience says
the 44-year-old Kron, who portrays
a knockoff of herself with Jayne
Houdyshell portraying Ann Kron. "I
start with things that are true, build-
ing blocks of personal anecdotes,
and then figure out how to make
theater out of them, how to create a
plot and dramatic action.
"The main thing fictionalized
is the character of me. I've taken a
couple of aspects of myself and cre-
ated this character who can act with
some tension in opposition to the
character of my mother and the cho-
rus members."

Autobiographical Theater
Kron, who left Michigan 22 years
ago, spent five years working on
Wellit follows her solo production
2.5 Minute Ride, which puts her
father, Walter Kron, at the center and
has to do with his experiences in the
I lolocaust.