[NoHo Arts District, CA] – A NoHo Arts theatre review of Michele Tannen’s solo show Surviving Mother’s Day as part of the Whitefire Theatres Solofest 2026.
We all have complicated relationships with our mothers. Michele Tannen’s experience, however, is a little more intense than most. Michele grew up with a mother who suffered from severe mental illness. Finding out at a very young age that her mom wasn’t quite like other people’s moms was a brutal lesson to learn. But through the hospitalizations, the frightening behaviour and the shame she and her sister felt, they survived. Mostly on a lot of humor and a little hope.
Surviving Mother’s Day is Michele’s own very personal way of sharing her life with a mother who was less than normal. Although mental illness is shockingly common. Almost 4% of parents have some form of mental illness in this country. And while I could make a joke about how parenting drives you crazy (and it does), what Michele and her sister went through was a lot more than the occasional temper tantrum because the house is a mess, or homework isn’t done. Michele’s mother spiralled and crumbled and Michele’s childhood suffered terribly because of it.
The show also explores Michele’s yearning for connection with family and how she went on a year-long search for her roots in the Jewish German community. Her mother had escaped Germany during the war and arrived in the US as a refugee at a time when this country wasn’t accepting any. Sound familiar?
But what remained of Michele’s family managed to stay and somehow to prosper. Who knows if Michele’s mother’s problems were formed in the mind of a small child suffering through loss and a fight for her young life when many around her never were able to escape. What could that do to a person? By exploring and connecting with cousins and uncles and aunts found through DNA websites, she was finally able to see herself in the faces of others. She found love and community with so many extended family that the journey through her own life of insecurity and profound stress, and uncertainty felt finally worth the price.
Solo shows are such a beautiful way to share lives with each other. We sit in the theatre, the lights go down, and we are drawn into lives that we would never know without this space and this hour or so in the dark. I feel so lucky to be privy to so many people’s lives. It makes me proud to know that through theatre, I can be assured of the fact that we are all going through the same thing. The same heartache, the same hilarity, the same strange helplessness. It’s a comfort to know that we are never alone in our most human moments.
Surviving Mother’s Day is a truly great example of how we should treat each other. How we should see past the crazy and the sad and into the heart of the unknowable. How we can embrace our own histories, and most importantly, we can forgive. Michele Tannen has written something meaningful, purposeful and important. She has shared her darkest moments and has only done this to find connections and to give us the ability to say, “that is me,” “that was us.”
Michele plays many roles in the show, and she does it with warmth and skill and panache! It’s a sweet story, a survivor’s memoir and a love letter. Bravo!
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