The full original cast returns for virtual reunion reading of Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House for the New Group
TWO BY WALLACE SHAWN
The New Group
Evening at the Talk House, Aunt Dan and Lemon
Through November 29, $25 ($45 for both plays)
thenewgroup.org
When I sat down at my desktop computer to watch the New Group’s online reunion reading of Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House, I was most interested in seeing how original director Scott Elliott, the company’s founding artistic director, would deal with the immersive nature of the preshow setup: As the audience entered the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center for its 2017 US premiere, the actors were already onstage, milling about Derek McLane’s comfy, inviting communal room, and we were encouraged to join them, grabbing a drink, sharing snacks, and chatting with them. “The last time I saw you, you were wearing a dress,” I casually said to Larry Pine, referring to his character in Harvey Feinstein’s 2014 Broadway drama, Casa Valentina, about cross-dressing in the Catskills in the 1960s. “Yes you did,” he answered with a smile. I then had gummy worms and marshmallows with Claudia Shear before sitting down and settling in for the play, which begins with a long monologue by Matthew Broderick in which he makes eye contact with just about everyone in the audience. I wasn’t sure how they would replicate that feeling of instant connection in a Zoom reading, and it turns out they chose to not even try, which disappointed me greatly. But I decided to keep watching anyway, and I’m supremely glad I did.
Part of “The New Group Off Stage: Two by Wallace Shawn,” which also includes a reunion reading of Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon, which is worth checking out (through November 29) just for Lili Taylor’s facial gestures during the three-minute countdown to the start of the play, Evening at the Talk House turns out to be an eerily prescient commentary on the state of the country postelection, as if Shawn had written it yesterday, or tomorrow. The play is about a reunion itself, as some of the cast and crew of the Broadway flop Midnight in a Clearing with Moon and Stars have gathered at their old haunt upon the tenth anniversary of the show’s opening night: playwright Robert (Broderick), star Tom (Pine), composer Ted (John Epperson), costume designer Annette (Shear), and producer Bill (Michael Tucker), along with longtime Talk House host Nellie (Jill Eikenberry) and server Jane (Annapurna Sriram), unexpectedly joined by the bedraggled Dick (Shawn).
US premiere of Evening at the Talk House took place at the Signature Center (photo by Monique Carboni)
As I wrote in my original review, early on, Robert, now a hugely successful television writer, says, “At that time, you see . . . theater played a somewhat larger part in the life of our city than it does now. . . . Because what exactly was ‘theater,’ really, when you actually thought about it?” In 2017, I noted how the play prefigured the Trump administration and the many proposed cuts to arts funding, but four years later it could be seen as being about the pandemic lockdown as theaters across the country and around the world find themselves unable to take the stage in front of audiences, relegated to livestreaming and recorded events over Zoom and YouTube at least in part because of the federal government’s profound failure at handling the Covid-19 health crisis.
In addition, there is a twist in the play that deals with targeting human life: In 2017, it had a sci-fi futuristic bent but today evokes the decisions made by the government and its citizens as to who will live and who will die, who is expendable and who is not in order to save the economy, echoing the cries of essential workers as they have to choose who to intubate and who will not be treated, left to die alone in the ICU or a nursing home.
But amid all that bleakness, Evening at the Talk House is a very funny play, a delight to watch both in person and digitally. The acting is some of the best I have seen in Zoom boxes, led by the soft-spoken Broderick, the engaging Sriram, the firmly brash Tucker, and Shawn himself, who can’t help but steal every scene he’s in, even when his character is just nodding off. The immediate future of theater is very much in doubt right now, but nostalgically looking back at the past is not the answer, even as these reunion readings grow in popularity. “I want the old days back! Where are they? Where have they gone?” Dick declares. Onstage, he wore pajamas, like most of us probably are as we watch him online; since we can see only the top half of Shawn in his cluttered home office, we don’t know what kind of bottoms he is wearing. Later, Robert asks Jane, “You don’t get pleasure from reliving the past?” The future might be uncertain, but with well-written, cleverly crafted works such as Evening at the Talk House, which hold up so well during this time of intense, unpredictable change and never-before-conceived-of stagings, theaterlovers still have much to look forward to.