MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON Starring Laura Linney

Elizabeth Strout's novel "My Name Is Lucy Barton" is a 1 one, 1 woman show starring Laura Linney;  reason enough to go.  Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Stout informs us in all her novels "We all have one story to tell we just need to learn to tell it over and over well."  Well, Lucy Barton (an astounding Laura Linney) manages to bring her story to life while addressing the audience directly.  Lucy also manages to morph into her mom  while conversing with her.  Mom has several stories to regale her daughter.  I have to stop here because the production was halted due to an elderly person in the orchestra who neither cared or knew to turn off her phone.  Lucy (a marvelous Linney) took the disruption in stride and started over from the beginning of the play.  Strout's novel is adroitly adapted by Rona Munro but it's Linney who brings life & angst to both Lucy & her mother.  Lucy fills the desolate set with a vortex of loneliness and stifling regrets.  Lucy wakes in the hospital to her mother whom she hasn't seen in almost a decade standing at the foot of her bed.  Lucy has come a long way from the small town in IL where she & her siblings were derided by classmates for living in squalor & for their malodorous stench.  Even Lucy's father goes to great measure to humiliate his effeminate son and then is filled with remorse for his behavior.  Lucy finds a warm haven in the school's library & solace in books.  Her diligence to schoolwork earns Lucy a college scholarship which leads to a writing career in NYC launching her journey navigating her way in the world.  This journey takes her from her lonely life at home and into a troubled marriage.  Lucy's mom just sees things & she tells them as she sees 'em.  She tells Lucy she'll have problems in her marriage but her girls will be fine.  Lucy's mom is astounded people make a living writing tales. She's plenty of her own tales to regale her daughter during her hospitalization of the quirky, unhappy people back home.  Lucy is all too aware how momentous this trip is for her mom.  What Lucy longs for most but never hears is she's loved.  Adults hold on tightly to the pain they felt as children.  Pangs of depressive loneliness & regret resonate from Lucy for what she never received nor proffered.  The stark set echoes a sense of isolation which is the story Lucy mournfully recounts time & time again.   Linney's return to Broadway is to be heralded but "My Name Is Lucy Barton" would suffice as an off-Broadway production.