Why did the Broadway production of Paula Vogel’s Mother Play cast its three actors according to the age of their characters at the end of the story?

Because the text spans decades, the roles could be played by thespians within a wide range of ages.

The Broadway production’s approach to this open-ended casting decision firmly plants it as a memory play, in the spirit of The Glass Menagerie (Celia Keenan-Bolger has some Broadway experience with this one) and Long Day’s Journey into Night (Jessica Lange has some Broadway experience with this one).

And especially for Lange’s character, putting the mother in the body of her later years underscores her lifelong Achilles’ heel, the trait that perpetually inhibits her from enjoying her current life: she’s stuck on the regrets — and the blame — of her past.

If youth is more commonly associated with looking ahead, and if seniority is more commonly associated with looking back, then casting an actor of Lange’s age roots her character in the latter. Even at the ripe age of 30, she acts like her best days are behind her. Lange’s age in real life is a reminder that even when her character was young, she felt like the possibilities and hope for her life were in the rearview. Lange’s age emphasizes her character’s tragic inevitability: she insisted on being old before her time, even when she still had a choice to rejuvenate her life.

But she rejects this choice again and again, dooming her to become what she eventually becomes: a sad and lonely soul, one who wasted the opportunity of her youth by fixating on what no one could change.