MOTHER, MAY I

winner of the 2005 Stanley Drama Award for Playwriting

Screamingly funny and raw-nerve painful, Mother, May I delves into the psychological dynamics within an intellectual, upper-middle class family, touching on human truths, recognizable, relatable and always wickedly incisive

Daniel Grunman comes home from the West coast along with his girlfriend, Sarah, for a visit.  Both Daniel and his sister Franny have secrets they've been keeping from their parents.  Daniel has never revealed his success in the television industry, while Franny has kept hidden her female lover who has also been working as her literary agent.

Under a constant barrage of off-handed belittlement and dismissal from their narcissistic mother and persistent offers of financial assistance from their compulsively placating father, Franny and Daniel find themselves reverting to life-long patterns of behavior, with Franny vying for Daniel's position as the favored child.  When the secrets come out, Franny executes her sibling coup by regressing into the needy daughter her parents can rescue.  Daniel, craving approval from parents capable only of rescue and not of support, loses the battle for their affection when they learn of his success.  He goes, allowing the door to close behind him, bettered by his sister, dismissed by his father and forever disappointed by a mother who requires eternal dependency.