Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love and Madness

The Lowdown

Linda Purl has spent fifty years being the warm one — Happy Days, Matlock, The Office — and now she is alone on a stage at 59E59 playing a daughter trying to get her mother out of a mental hospital and, later, out of her own head.

Crazy Mama: A True Story of Love and Madness is Sharon Scott Williams's award-winning memoir turned into a solo play, directed by Anson Williams — yes, Potsie — who has been quietly building a second career behind the camera and the curtain for decades. Will Huse plays the Blues Man, which is the show's way of saying the music does the talking when the words run out.

It is two hours and five minutes about paranoid schizophrenia, an alcoholic father, and a family that keeps turning up anyway. It is funnier than that sentence makes it sound. September 16 through October 18 in the East 59th Street building that has quietly become one of the best rooms in town. Tickets are $42, or $27 if you catch the first two nights.