‘The Art of Disappearing’ captured in painfully honest drama

The mother-daughter relationship is, to be sure, a complex one, with comedians frequently playing on a daughter’s horrified realization that she is “becoming” her mother.

In Stephanie Alison Walker’s fierce and troubling play, “The Art of Disappearing” — now in its world premiere at Berwyn’s 16th Street Theater under the expert direction of Ann Filmer (whose recent hit was the Remy Bumppo production of “The Clean House”) — that realization assumes downright harrowing and tragic proportions as an already troubled daughter is confronted by the knowledge that her willful and still beautiful mother is suffering from early onset dementia.

Walker’s play begins a bit stiffly as Melissa (Amanda Powell), a 20-something artist who abruptly fled her suburban home years earlier and hasn’t seen her parents for the past two years, returns for brunch. She has responded to the invitation, made during a rare phone call from her mother, that turns out to be not at all what it seemed, or what Melissa may have hoped it meant. And Melissa, unprepared to visit on her own, has brought along Jack (the very appealing Andres Enriquez), a cute, loquacious guy she introduces as her fiance. As it turns out, only Melissa’s rather surprised father, Henry (Tom McElroy), joins the two of them at the table.

When Melissa’s mother, Charlotte (Joan Kohn in an absolutely stunning performance), finally does appear, she seems shrewish, judgmental and unwelcoming. You understand why Melissa might have fled all those years earlier. But the more you watch and listen to Charlotte, the more you realize something is not entirely right with her.

Henry clearly is in a state of denial and suppressed panic, though he surely senses something is wrong with the wife he loves. Melissa just seems confirmed in her earlier assessment of her mother — the woman who still resents her daughter’s youthful choices, and who questions her artistic talent, when all Melissa really wants is some sign of approval.

But the signs of Charlotte’s disintegration — countered by her ferocious and frenzied attempts to cover up what she herself senses is her unraveling — are eventually diagnosed in scenes of great pathos. And at the request of her father, Melissa — who has lost her day job, is in debt, and, as it happens, has rejected Jack, an art world friend she has kept on a leash — returns home. A rather blunt doctor (Enriquez) makes the formal diagnosis, with MRI scans confirming his assessment.

Dementia (whether in middle age or old age) has become the subject of a number of recent plays. Walker has very skillfully observed the extreme mood swings and erratic behavior that can accompany it, with Kohn brilliantly baring her soul in a role that demands quicksilver shifts of awareness and response. One “side effect” of the disease, an intensified eroticism, is portrayed to particularly devastating effect in a scene played with unforgettable honesty by Kohn and McElroy.

Melissa, of course, is terrified that she might share her mother’s fate. Though she never overtly says this, Powell, a most watchable and unpredictable actress, suggests that Melissa (who at one point uses the MRIs of her mother’s brain as the inspiration for her paintings) is in many ways her mother’s daughter. Of course the shock of this ordinarily controlled and controlling woman’s condition is overwhelming and terrifying for all involved.

Played out on Joanna Iwanicka’s very cleverly adaptable set (with subtly character-defining streetwear by designer Rachel S. Parent), Walker’s play is full of surprises. And it is rooted in the kind of harrowing truths few people want to confront.