With playgoing on hiatus, the contributors to New York Stage Review have decided to provide our readers with alternate discussions of theater: think pieces, book/music/video reviews, and the like. We would much rather be reviewing live theater, and we look forward to the day when the curtain rises once again.
The Broadway season was disrupted six weeks ago; we critics, at the behest of the management, are still holding our opening night reviews of Six, which was to have opened within ninety minutes of the governmental curfew. The past month has brought an expanding range of theater-related entertainment onto our online devices.
This began with previously filmed plays (such as NT Live’s One Man, Two Guvnors) and quickly moved into livestreamed performances by myriad theaterfolk, highlighted last week by Michael Urie’s frenetically iPhone-captured performance of his breakthrough piece, the 2013 Jonathan Tolins comedy Buyer and Cellar.
On Wednesday night, April 29, we shall see something else again: a new play by a top American dramatist, produced as intended. What Do We Need to Talk About?: Conversations on Zoom is the play; Richard Nelson the author/director of the four Apple Family Plays, has made this a fifth entry in the superlative series; and the Public Theater—which since 2010 has given us eight plays in Nelson’s politically provocative Rhinebeck Panorama (including the Apple Family Plays, three Gabriel Family Plays, and The Michaels)—has reassembled the six-person Apple Family actors for the occasion.
As for “politically provocative,” the first line and the first belly laugh of the first play in the series—That Hopey, Changey Thing, which opened on Election Night of 2010—is a profanity-laden rant about Andrew Cuomo. Strange times, indeed.
This is not an existing play hereby given a makeshift premiere, nor a play in development rushed forward to fit the medium. From the description, it seems to have been written now, which is to say that Nelson will likely not finish it until 90 minutes or so before it enters our living rooms. Or later. The press description suggests that it has been devised explicitly for the new shoot-it-in-your-living-room format. This is no actors-sitting-around-on-stage play converted to fit today’s strictures; it is, apparently, conceived as a Zoom conversation coming from the actors’ assorted bunkers. The fact that Nelson serves as his own director makes this more practical than it might seem. The play has been commissioned by—and will be performed as—a benefit for The Public.
What Do We Need to Talk About? will be duly reviewed by New York Stage Review (and, presumably, by the entire theater press corps) on Thursday. This preliminary column serves to alert readers in advance of the Wednesday, April 29 premiere, at the link below. We are told that the present plans are for the play to remain online at the Public site through Sunday, May 3.
The cast, in alphabetical order, is comprised of Jon DeVries, Stephen Kunken, Sally Murphy, Maryann Plunkett, Laila Robins, and Jay O. Sanders. Having originally reviewed most of the Rhinebeck plays, which featured many of the Apple actors, I have previously praised the performers so much that I shall hereby abstain. Except to say that Plunkett—who as a slip of an ingenue won the 1987 Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical Tony Award for “doin’ the Lambeth Walk” in Me and My Girl—is arguably the present-day equivalent of Geraldine Page and Colleen Dewhurst combined, and mustn’t be missed; and that Plunkett’s real-life spouse, the ever-valuable Sanders, is at the top of my present list in this year’s Best Actor in a Musical Tony stakes—if we ever see this truncated season’s Tonys—for his performance in Girl from the North Country.
The first four Apple Plays (as well as the three Gabriel Plays) can presently be streamed on Channel 13’s Theater Close-Up series, at the second link below. This, alas, is available only in the New York Metro area. Given the limited Public Theater runs of the plays, relatively few theatergoers were able to see the Apple Plays, which contain some of the finest stage-writing of the last decade. Thus, a chance to see them (and a chance for those lucky enough to have already seen them to catch them once more) in close proximity to, and in preparation for, the livestreaming of the premiere of the newest Apple Play.
What Do We Need to Talk About?: Conversations on Zoom will be livestreamed on April 29, 2020 at 7:30 PM, and will remain online through May 3. Information and streaming: publictheater.org
The first four Apple Family Plays can be livestreamed at thirteen.org
