Small is Beautiful and Carolineproves to be a beautiful small play which packs a big punch. Maddie, a recovering addict with a dearly loved 9-year old child, travels across the country to ask her own mother, Rhea, for help. Caroline, born male, has been attacked and injured by Maddie's boyfriend for attempting to wear a dress.
Rhea, bruised by years of trying to help Maddie and failing, can be forgiven for doubting Maddie's ability to stay sober and raise her child. She offers the kind of help that would separate Maddie and Caroline, a compromise that no mother could accept.
Caroline, written by Preston Max Allen, juggles the competing perspectives on motherhood between Rhea and Maddie with delicacy and even-handedness. The scenes between the two women are searing and heartfelt on both sides.
Emotionally, the audience is torn between the young woman who hopes to have put her past behind her but is not sure that her mother's concern that she will lapse and endanger her child may not be right. And that of Rhea, who wants to love and protect her grandchild, as she tried but failed to do with her daughter, but fears to lose them both by imposing conditions to safeguard herself from remembered heartbreak.
The performances from all three players are exemplary, particularly that of River Lipe-Smith as Caroline. Beautifully written, this child is both precocious and damaged, with a charm that will undoubtedly make her a star. As her mother, Chloe Grace Moretz has the right combination of vulnerability and steeliness to make her believable and Amy Landecker, as Rhea, displays both the control and the certainty that drove away her daughter years before.
This production, directed by David Cromer, does everything right. He balances the emotional temperature of his characters and supports them with sympathy for their individual needs and wants.
Lee Jellinek's versatile set gets us effortlessly from a diner to a cheap motel to a museum to a luxurious suburban home, with minimal disruption.
I might have a quibble about the ending of the play but it's minor compared to the admiration I feel for everybody involved in Caroline. I hope this beautiful small play has a future.