Conversations With Mother, a new play about the complicated relationship between matriarchs and their gay sons by Matthew Lombardo, features a piece of withering criticism embedded in the dialogue. About halfway through the action, the title character, Maria Collavechio (Caroline Aaron), repeats a venomous barb lobbed by a New York Times reviewer toward her playwright son, Bobby (Matt Doyle): “You never met a cliché you didn’t love.”

How could I possibly top that?

There’s no doubt that Conversations With Mother—which opened recently at Theatre 555, in a production directed by Noah Himmelstein—contains its fair share of cliché. Maria is the type of overbearing Italian mama we’ve seen a hundred times on stage, screen and television set, who smothers as much as she mothers. Bobby sails through a checklist of queer banalities: promiscuity, drug addiction, theatrical affect, late-in-life heteronormativity.

Ultimately, though, that imagined critic might have been a touch unfair. Conversations With Mother contains several affecting moments nestled among its well-trod ground. A scene set in rehab dramatizes the truth that even age and success cannot overpower a self-destructive streak. The script deals with domestic violence in queer relationships—an underexplored topic—in a refreshingly forthright way. And much of Lombardo’s writing is grip-your-seat funny, even if the jokes aren’t exactly new.

At 80 minutes, the play doesn’t overstay its welcome, and Himmelstein keeps the action toggling nicely between comedy and drama. At times, the proceedings dip too far in one direction or other—broad one moment, maudlin the next—but the lapses are mostly forgivable. Ditto Aaron’s Maria, whose delivery can feel a tad one-note, but who still manages to be endearing. (Doyle, as the—ahem—straight man, is consistently excellent.)

At the matinee I attended, the woman sitting next to me fought back tears at multiple intervals, often while holding the hand of her own twenty-something son. The show is clearly reaching its target audience. Maybe a cliché is a cliché for a reason. Conversations With Mother will likely remind you of conversations from your own life—for better or worse.

Photo by Carol Rosegg