Linda Purl is a legion of one with a truly impressive solo performance in Crazy Mama, a brand-new play by Sharon Scott Williams. Produced at the Rubicon Theatre, this dramatic representation of Williams’s childhood in mid-century Roanoke is based on her memoir and focused on her relationship with her psychologically disturbed mother.
The narrative linchpin and emotional rudder of the story (and Purl’s primary character) is 8-year-old Sharon. Purl also takes on the voice and physicality of other characters throughout the account, including her father, aunts, several nurses, and frightened neighbors — she even channels Sharon’s paranoid, delusional mother, offering the audience a child’s terrified, confused view of her schizophrenic parent’s warped reality.
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography 
Acclaimed stage and screen actress Linda Purl (‘Happy Days,’ ‘Matlock,’ ‘The Office,’ ‘Homeland,’ ‘True Blood’) stars in the World Premiere drama ‘Crazy Mama : A True Story of Love & Madness,’ part of Rubicon’s 2024/2025 “Dare to Dream” Season. | Photo: Lore Photography
Directed by Anson Williams, Crazy Mama dances smoothly on stage, thanks to robust acting and writing. A strong, committed performance by Purl breathes the authenticity of hope despite lost innocence into an emotionally potent, well-crafted script. Each segment of the play is punctuated with live music soundbites of the bluesy “Crazy Mama” guitar number, played and sung by Will Huse. These interludes add to the folksy, bittersweet charm of the performance and balance the more ragged, frenetic energy of the characters’ crumbling lives.
The only thing that would have painted a fuller stage picture would be the chance to meet “Mama” as she’s described “before the incident,” so the audience could experience for themselves the horror of her violent break from reality. (This would also facilitate greater audience empathy for young Sharon’s sense of sadness and loss.) Because we only meet Mama as a mental patient, whatever strength of that gut-punch moment that would have been found through direct comparison to “normal” Mama is left for the audience to extrapolate, rather than in the hands of a capable performer, like Purl, to direct.
See Crazy Mama at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura through April 13. rubicontheatre.org/shows-events
