Mother Bear at Mortar Theatre Company | Theater review

McGhan’s new play takes place at a truck stop where no one is who he or she seems to be. Freely (Plocharczyk) is a lawyer and Delia (Enriquez) is a U.S. marshal, but both of them are pretending to be truckers in order to nab the same quarry—a burly guy named Mother (Farrell) who leads a criminal gang of big-rig operators involved in drug trafficking. Delia has gone undercover for obvious reasons; Freely has a scheme to persuade Mother and his group to join the union he represents, thus giving the fledgling organization a much needed boost in numbers and muscle.

The plans briefly overlap when Freely and Delia decide to work together, but mutiny in Mother’s ranks, led by an unscrupulous sleaze (played by Dustin Whitehead, with relish), throws everything into disarray. This leads to more twists and reversals—including a heavily telegraphed revelation about Mother—culminating in a final burst of violence.

Director Boat supplies a detailed evocation of the milieu, buttressed by Farrell’s compelling, tormented-tough-guy take on Mother and the seen-it-all weariness Goode brings to the role of the kingpin’s long-suffering wife. But the script suffers from perplexing character development and a few too many labored plot contrivances. A major problem is Freely (played by Plocharczyk as something of a simp). He’s required to stick around, continually risking death to build a union for a profession he doesn’t practice, but his reasons for doing so—beyond his mild guilt over past union-busting—remain vague and unconvincing to the end.