Singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke brings life with her eccentric mom to Malvern stage

FOR SINGER-songwriter Jonatha Brooke, words and music just weren't enough.

Through June 28, Brooke, a favorite of the "AAA radio" (WXPN) crowd, is performing her piece, "My Mother Has 4 Noses," at Malvern's People's Light theater. The show, which ping-pongs between monologues and original songs, chronicles the life and death of Brooke's mother, who apparently was the very definition of the word "eccentric."

While Nancy Lee Nelson (who liked to be known as "Stoney," from her maiden name, Stone) was clearly a free spirit, much of the play revolves around her being a practitioner of Christian Science, which prohibits medical treatment for anything, whether a headache or cancer. The show also details Stoney's final months as she was dying of dementia, among other conditions.

"The story that kept unfolding while I was caring for Mom was so funny that I felt it had to be [done as] theater," Brooke said during a recent phone call. "That there was no way I could impart the craziness and the weird balance of tragedy and comedy in just an album.

"As much as it was daunting - I had never planned on being an actor - it just felt imperative [that] it had be a different format, it had to be a hybrid of all the things I've managed to do over my life. I've become a storyteller on stage. I was a dancer until I was 30. So there are all these elements that combined to prepare me for this moment."

The first reading of "4 Noses" (the title refers to the prosthetic proboscises Brooke's mom required after untreated skin cancer ravaged her face) took place at Pittsburgh's City Theatre, just five months after Stoney died in January 2012. It was, not surprisingly, a difficult assignment.

Describing the creative process as "writing and crying and writing and crying some more," Brooke admitted she was "terrified" before the first reading.

"So I got to Pittsburgh - I was still 'on book,' so I didn't have to memorize it for the first reading. I think I cried through the entire thing. I was a big, sopping mess."

The director kept asking her if she wanted to take a break, but Brooke insisted she needed to get through it without stopping "to see if I can." After that, she added, "It was OK. I only cried when I was supposed to."

A play dealing with the mental and physical deterioration of a loved one hardly sounds like a laugh riot, but the chuckles come regularly (a second-act highlight is Brooke's description of her mother's attempted escape from rehab after she consented to facial surgery). And that, Brooke insisted, is the point of "My Mother Has 4 Noses."

"We all share these horrible, harrowing stretches of life . . . and yet there is great comedy in it. If you can step back and see this crazy conundrum of, oh, my God, this terrible thing is happening, but it's also wicked funny at the same time, I think what I hope is that people will recognize that in their own life and have permission to laugh.

"I think permission to laugh is a big thing. If we don't talk about it, it becomes this weird, scary thing. I think the more we can share it, the less harrowing it is."

We'd be remiss if we did not make known our disappointment in this week's decision by the Doylestown Township zoning board to reject a proposed project at Highland Farm, the Bucks County estate where Oscar Hammerstein II lived, and where he wrote the lyrics to such iconic Broadway hits as "Oklahoma," "South Pacific" and "The Sound of Music."

Hammerstein's grandson Will and the property's current owner, Christine Cole, wanted to turn the house into a museum and build a 400-seat theater where productions of Hammerstein musicals would be staged.

We agree with the younger Hammerstein that it makes little sense for opponents to have dubbed the project a "neighborhood-changing" event, when the property's neighbors include an office park, a four-lane highway and a golf course. Another neighbor is a private residence.

Will Hammerstein, whose passion and vision for the plan greatly impressed us during a recent chat we had, told KYW (1060-AM) he's waiting for the township's final report before deciding whether or not to continue his fight.

While a museum alone likely would have been approved, Will was really set on having the theater. "Imagine," he told me, "you've seen the room where he wrote the lyrics and the [outdoor area] that inspired him to write such songs as 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning' [from 'Oklahoma'], then you walk 150 feet and see the show."

This sounds like a wonderful way to honor and preserve such an important part of 20th-century American popular culture. Here's hoping Hammerstein and Cole don't give up the fight.