The aging Anna (Linda Lavin) has a secret: years ago, when her son thought she was waiting around for him to finish up his weekend viola lessons at Julliard, she was actually having an affair. 

Now she wants her son Seth (Greg Keller) and daughter Abby (Kate Arrington) to know. But they're not sure why. And they're not sure they believe her. Maybe she's delusional. Maybe she's making it up.

"Our Mother's Brief Affair," directed by Lynne Meadow, touches on themes that show up over and over again in playwright Richard Greenberg's work: what happens when long-held secrets must come out; the ways history resonates in the present; and, most important of all, how we shape our own identities.

Lavin's Anna is a steely matriarch, her narcissism layered with warmth and wry humor and intelligence. A Jewish girl from the Lower East Side who moved to Long Island's more swanky Merrick, she treasures memories of her Burberry coat and autumnal scarf, because she remembers feeling put-together and powerful. She wants her children to know she is more — was always more — than just their mother. She is someone who touched, if briefly, a major historical event. She is someone who had a secret, and a secret implies some mystery, some glamour. 

Anna is compelling, the planet in this drama with all the gravitational pull. The other characters float around her like pale moons, barely seen except in the faint glow of her reflected light. We just barely have a sense of who they are. Seth is an obituary writer, so his job is crafting people's identities after death. Abby is unsure if she should stay in her foundering, same-sex relationship, even though she has a child. The lover and Anna's husband (both played by John Procaccino) are both seen only in Anna's memory, as ciphers that serve her own purposes. 

The play seems not quite fully realized, and yet Anna is a character filled with determination and a need to be remembered for the complex woman she actually was. She continues to be memorable, long after the stage goes dark.