Once that is a success, Albert will feel free to marry Rosie, despite his meddlesome mother Mae's (Maureen Stapleton) long history of ensuring nothing will come between her and her beloved son.

Here Ms. Flanigan gives a tightly wound portrayal of Greta, who is recently divorced and has been dragged to the ritual by her meddlesome mother, characterized brilliantly by Joyce Castle.

At home, behind closed bathroom doors, she practices genital self-mutilation while her bossy, meddlesome mother (Annie Girardot), with whom she lives, prepares dinner.

Among the secondary characters are Olympia Dukakis as Ms. Aniston's meddlesome mother (there is actually a familylike resemblance) and Mr. Bacon as a charming louse who specializes in illicit affairs.

They live in a nice little house across the street from Robert, Ray's often hilariously morose brother, and their omnipresent, insufferably meddlesome mother and father, Marie and Frank.

When asked about the past, Mathilde's seductive, meddlesome mother, who is still beautiful at 53, equivocates and recalls her husband as being insanely jealous.

Katie, angered at finding out the truth about her father's retirement from Pony's unpleasantly meddlesome mother (Estelle Winwood), injures herself in a fall on Knocknasheega while trying to catch Cleopatra at night.

Either way, the themes are largely the same: hypochondria, Hebrew School, prune juice, feuding relatives, life in New York (like variable mortgages tied to the murder rate), disapproving fathers, meddlesome mothers.

Harayda is an astute social commentator, offering a playful platter of urbane 20-somethings, imperious rich folk and meddlesome mothers.

Both have nagging, meddlesome mothers (played by Karen Black) who try to suppress their daughters' creativity and re- direct their lives toward more conventional domestic goals.