In the summer of 1969, Beau Stanley's last hurrah before heading off to study architecture in college, doting Mama Lillian vows to help him finally lose his baby fat. Armed with a supply of diet pills and a food-free regimen that includes tearing down a family room wall, 3 a.m. trips to Dulles Airport and blazing, amphetamine-fueled days on the beach, mother and son spend a memorable vacation together. But Beau's weight loss isn't restless Lillian's only project, and in an unguarded moment, she reveals her just-begun affair with a travelling defense contractor, Jack Carew. Once Lillian introduces son and lover, Beau's caught in the oedipal crossfire of a covert and explosive new alliance, forced to cover his Mama's many absences from home. Over the next decade, Jack's repeated pledge to end his own loveless marriage and sweep Lillian away proves a hollow promise. As increasingly beleaguered Beau sacrifices his own independence to help his mother confront her disillusionment and finally, betrayal, parent-child roles are turned upside down. Mama and Jack Carew is a harrowing, oftentimes black-comedic portrait of an unlikely triangle.

"Disturbing shenanigans. The Oedipal implications are obvious from the start in Mama and Jack Carew, where we find '60s Southern floozy Lillian sunbathing with her chubby, bookish son. 'Won't drink, won't smoke. Whose child are you?' she says, eyeing the suntan lotion. 'Grease me up again.' Forcing teenage Beau to pop diet pills and plying him with Playboys, her mothering goes from dysfunctional to disturbing after she introduces him to her new lover, Jack. Corley's dialogue has a muscularity that recalls Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire repartee, and his characters are well-drawn and complex. There are plenty of laughs, but they punctuate darker themes. It is a play about appetites and the consequences of letting them rule one's life, and it succeeds in provoking both laughter and thought." -Arizona Republic

Key West Theatre Festival, June 2002, featuring Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Martin LaPlatney and Carol Monferdini; directed by Thomas Caruso.

LILLIAN: 45 - 55; an unstoppable Southern house afire: raucous, ribald, and irascible; deeply unfulfilled, at times quietly ruminative, aware she's a casualty of too many regrettable choices.
BEAU: 18-29; always incisive, at first shyly self-effacing and needy, later brutally frank, possessing the survivor's wicked sense of the ridiculous that's proof positive he's his mother's son.
JACK: 45 - 55, an amiable, loquacious winner no longer quite at the top of his game; until his considerable charm gives way to deceit, he smoothly scores.