Baum’s performance provides the biggest jolt of energy in Mother, Mother, spanning decades from precociously dramatic adolescent to melancholy senior. It’s a terrific exploration of a woman facing the impediments of her era, and becomes the fulcrum in a compelling look at mother-daughter relationships—specifically, the way even a woman who felt limited by the expectations of her own mother can’t help doing the same thing to her own daughter. And there’s a solid subplot in the relationship between Annie and her childhood friend Martha Hughes (Tamara Howell)—who went on to become the first woman elected to the Utah state senate—related to the shifting opportunities available to women as the century turned. Jensen attempts to cover perhaps a few too many topics along the way, from abortion access to Maude’s gender-bending proclivities, but the heart of Mother, Mother remains anchored in the tug of war between what women dream of doing, and what they feel “allowed” to do. And along the way, it reveals something of a corollary to Tolstoy’s quote: Even within the same unhappy family, from generation to generation, that unhappiness might become different.