I used to think that only my family was weird, but the older I get, the more apparent it becomes that all families are weird in their own special ways. Still, I think it’s safe to say that the family in Jill and Jack is weirder than most. It sounds as if the unseen mother has an unspecified mental illness (making it somewhat confusing when Jack and Jill insist at the end of the play that she’s completely sane.) Although it’s suggested that she is a capable, intellignt woman woman who has traveled widely (as a journalist?) ,her adult children feel she needs looking after. Jack is the son of a crack addict who has been adopted into the family. Jill is an arrested adolescent searching for a father figure. None of them are likeable. While the acting is terrific and the play itself is engaging, a confusing subplot about a double murder seems tacked on only as the set-up to a darkly humorous scene in the morgue. This play is a little confusing, slightly messy and a lot like life itself.
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This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.
