Over the weekend I had the privilege of seeing Carolyn Doyle’s “Confessions of a Refrigerator Mother” at the Marsh Theater in San Francisco. Ms. Doyle’s 70-minute monologue is about her family life, particularly life with 9-year-old Joaquin, who is severely autistic. (“Refrigerator mother” is a reference to a now-discredited theory by Leo Kanner, the psychiatrist who first identified autism. Kanner believed that autism might be caused by a lack of warmth or affection shown by mothers towards their babies).
Ms. Doyle’s show is funny, unbearably sad, and overall, a very true picture of a family coping with autism. Bravo!
Rachel Norton 