Tag Archives: DR2 Theatre

HOMEWARD BOUND?

Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) and Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) spend a difficult night together in A Guide for the Homesick (photo by Russ Rowland)

A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK
DR2 Theatre
103 East Fifteenth St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Tuesday – Sunday through February 2, $49 – $129
www.aguideforthehomesick.com

Flight delays and cancellations are unpleasant ways to start or end a trip, putting a sour taste in your mouth. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why a recent Saturday-night performance of Ken Urban’s A Guide for the Homesick, following a half-hour technical delay, felt so distant.

As audience members arrived at the DR2 Theatre, an usher advised them of a hold-up that should only be a few minutes. It was standing-room-only in the lobby as people checked their phones, got a drink in the lounge, and looked uncomfortable, much like waiting for crucial information in an airport that is coming in only bits and pieces. Everyone was relieved when at last the doors opened and the actors took the stage, but the drama about two men having trouble returning home never really took off.

It’s January 2011, and Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) has invited Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) up to his hotel room near the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol on a rainy night. They had just met in the bar; Teddy, a bold and beautiful thirtysomething Black man, and Jeremy, a squirrelly twentysomething white guy, are drinking beers. Slowly — very, very slowly — we learn that Teddy, who was born and raised in Roxbury and now lives in New York City, has been traveling with his best friend and finance colleague, Eddie, who is about to get married to Margo, but Eddie has disappeared. Jeremy, a Harvard grad, explains that he has missed his flight back to Boston and does not have his luggage or a room.

Teddy is clearly concerned about Eddie, but he refuses to answer any of Margo’s constant calls, assuming it might be bad news. Jeremy had been volunteering at a health clinic outside Kampala in Uganda but had to cut his time short because of an event that haunts him, which he is unwilling to discuss out of shame and embarrassment. Jeremy keeps heading for the door, but Teddy insists he stay; when Teddy moves close to him, Jeremy freaks out, terrified that Teddy is making a move on him.

Soon the narrative alternates between the immediate past and the present, as Belcher portrays Teddy and Nicholas, an HIV+ patient in Uganda who Jeremy is trying to help, and Schlesinger shifts between Jeremy and Eddie as each man’s story eventually comes out.

Teddy (McKinley Belcher III) and Jeremy (Uly Schlesinger) go at it in New York premiere of Ken Urban play (photo by Russ Rowland)

Urban (Nibbler, Sense of an Ending) was initially inspired by a commission to write a play about human rights workers, and he decided to focus in part on the violent homophobia in Uganda, which has attempted to pass a number of Anti-Homosexuality laws since 2009. Some countries, such as the Netherlands, have stopped aid as a result, and Urban doesn’t shy away from the involvement of the United States.

“These so-called men of G-d from your country, they keep visiting, and they turn my congregation into this,” Nicholas tells Jeremy, referring to a pair of American pastors who spoke out against “the plague of homosexuals” at his church.

Jeremy replies, “This is a former English colony; there’s always been rules about homosexuality,” to which Nicholas answers, “Long ago, we were invaded by the British. But these days, there is a new invasion. This time from America. I do not recognize my friends, my own family, when they say things like I heard yesterday.” Jeremy assures him, “Look. People say stupid things. But I promise you it’s just a tipping point before change comes. It’s the way it always happens. Things look bad, churches get up in arms, then they lose, and good wins out.”

This past April, Uganda’s Constitutional Court upheld the 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act, which Human Rights Watch declared “further entrenches discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and makes them prone to more violence.” Good doesn’t always win out, and Jeremy’s touching and very American belief that tolerance will prevail feels like naivete these days.

Lawrence Moten III’s hotel-room set is appropriately claustrophobic, while Daniel Kluger’s sound features harsh rains that keep Teddy and Jeremy indoors, as well as the din of airplanes taking off and landing, emphasizing the two protagonists’ fears of getting on board and flying home.

Unfortunately, the play, directed by Shira Milikowsky (The Lily’s Revenge, BrideWidowHag), drags out revealing the various secrets and plot twists, making eighty minutes feel much longer. It was hard not to scream out to Teddy and Jeremy to just say what they needed to say already and answer the damn phone. Belcher III (A Soldier’s Play, The Light), who originated the roles of Teddy/Nicholas in 2017 at the Huntington Theatre Company’s Calderwood Pavilion, in a production helmed by Colman Domingo, has a firm grasp on his parts and imbues them with a tender vulnerability. Schlesinger (This Beautiful Future, The Animal Kingdom) is so whiny as Jeremy and manic as Eddie that you just want to grab him and make him cut it out.

There are some intense, riveting moments in A Guide for the Homesick, but too much of the story is artificially manufactured in getting to the point, one that ultimately feels out of date, whether the show is delayed or not.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

STILL

Mark (Tim Daly) and Helen (Jayne Atkinson) go over old times in Lia Romeo’s Still (photo by Joey Moro)

STILL
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Extended through May 23, $36.50-$90
www.coltcoeur.org/still

During the pandemic, I watched Lia Romeo’s lovely Zoom play Sitting & Talking, in which a pair of septuagenarians, a gruff divorcé and an elegant widow, portrayed by TV favorites Dan Lauria and Wendie Malick, respectively, try to make a connection online. Romeo’s latest, Still, is a lovely in-person play in which a pair of sexagenarians, a gentle divorcé and a never-married writer, portrayed by TV favorites Tim Daly and Jayne Atkinson, spend one night sitting and talking, trying to reconnect and, perhaps, rekindle an old relationship.

Continuing at the intimate DR2 Theatre through May 23, the seventy-five-minute Colt Coeur production takes place in a hotel, where Mark (Daly) and Helen (Atkinson) meet for the first time in decades. Mark is a sixty-seven-year-old bank lawyer who has just gotten divorced after twenty-nine years of marriage; Helen is a sixty-five-year-old bestselling novelist. He has two daughters; she has no children.

Their conversation in the lounge ranges from past memories to current dreams to aging and ailments. “You know what I’ve heard?” Helen begins. “The cells in your body completely renew themselves every seven years. I mean they’re all renewing themselves all the time, obviously, but after seven years you’re a completely different person. On a cellular level.” It’s a potent comment about how people change over time, no matter how much they might think they are the same, shortly followed by this poignant exchange:

Mark: You haven’t changed much.
Helen: You don’t think so? I was scared, getting dressed, that you’d think I looked so —
Mark: No, no, you look great.
Helen: Great for my age, maybe, but I look terrible for forty. How old are you in your head?
Mark: What do you —
Helen: Like when you picture your face — and then you see your real face — do you get surprised?
Mark: I think maybe I’m fifty.
Helen: I think I’m even younger than that. I think I’m probably around the age when you last saw me.
Mark: You don’t look that different.
Helen: You didn’t know me.
Mark: What?
Helen: When you first came in — I was sitting here, you walked right past the table. I had to say “Mark!” —
Mark: It was dark!
Helen: You thought — who’s that shriveled-up woman. That little old woman — that can’t be Helen —
Mark: That’s not what I thought!
Helen: It’s okay. I thought you looked old, too.
Mark: You did?
Helen: Not in a bad way. Men age better than women.
Mark: That’s bullshit.
Helen: I know! I know it is, but I still feel it.

They discuss dating, Tinder, poetry, being sick, happiness, who broke up with whom all those years ago, and why they hadn’t stayed in touch. He says, “Sometimes I feel like everything could have been different. I mean — if you and I — I know we wanted different things —” She replies lightly, “Yeah, I wanted you, and you wanted someone else.”

But after Mark asks Helen to come upstairs to his hotel room, a disagreement — about the immediate future and the book Helen is currently writing — places a potential roadblock in their relationship.

Tim Daly and Jayne Atkinson excel in moving play about love, loneliness, and aging (photo by Joey Moro)

Romeo (Connected, Green Whales) has crafted a tender, insightful work that explores what was, what is, and what still might be, directed by Adrienne Campbell-Holt (Dodi & Diana, Eureka Day) with a graceful delicacy even as things heat up. Alexander Woodward’s sets are cozy, with soft lighting by Reza Behjat and warm sound by Hidenori Nakajo, inviting the audience into the caring story; Barbara A. Bell’s costumes are naturalistic at first but then grow bold in the second half.

Mark and Helen are believable, well-developed characters in relatable situations. They’ve been through good times and bad, now wondering if they might be able to have the future they once considered so long ago. Emmy nominee Daly (Coastal Disturbances, Downstairs) and two-time Tony nominee Atkinson (The Rainmaker, Enchanted April) give beautifully nuanced performances as two proud individuals taking stock of their lives, wondering what comes next and whether they are still prepared to take chances and make changes to their relatively comfortable existence as senior citizens.

“It’s all kind of a crapshoot, at our age,” Mark says.

But Still wisely shows us that it doesn’t have to be.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CYRANO

Peter Dinklage struts his stuff in wife’s musical adaptation of Cyrano story (photo by Monique Carboni)

The New Group at the Daryl Roth Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $107-$252
thenewgroup.org

You don’t need me to tell you that Peter Dinklage is an extraordinary actor. You can see for yourself in the New Group’s world premiere production of Cyrano, Erica Schmidt’s musical retelling of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 novel Cyrano de Bergerac, which opened last night at the Daryl Roth Theatre. Dinklage, who soared above his castmates in winning four Emmys as the wise, debauched Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones, commands the stage from the very start of the play; his eyes and body are so emotive, you cannot take your eyes off him. As opposed to many other stars who have portrayed Cyrano onstage and onscreen — Ralph Richardson, Derek Jacobi, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Plummer, Gérard Depardieu, Steve Martin, and Kevin Kline among them — Dinklage does not wear a prosthetic nose; he is just himself, as he is. When Cyrano says early on, “I am living proof that God has a sick sense of humor,” it takes on additional meaning, given Dinklage’s achondroplasia. When he’s not onstage, you search for him, whether it’s when you hear his voice booming from the side of the audience or as he waits in the wings, watching the action in character, partially hidden by hanging ropes. Alas, if only the rest of the show were up to the same standards.

Cyrano is a brave, feared member of a company of guards; he is a man of both the pen and the sword, as expert with a blade as he is with a pencil. He is madly, desperately in love; the object of his affection is his childhood friend Roxanne (Hamilton’s Jasmine Cephas Jones), but the object of her affection is the novice guard Christian (Blake Jenner), a handsome man with not much upstairs. “I’m so stupid. It’s shameful,” he acknowledges. Roxanne is also desired by the wealthy and powerful Duke De Guiche (Ritchie Coster), who is charge of the company; he is determined to have Roxanne as his wife. Roxanne is love-starved as well: She sings, “I’d give anything for someone to say / That they can’t live without me and they’ll be there forever / I’d give anything for someone to say to me / That no matter how bad it gets they won’t turn away from me.” She falls for Christian at first sight, but he’s such a dull, dense beauty that he has no idea how to woo her, so Cyrano, who cannot bear to see Roxanne disappointed, starts ghostwriting love letters for Christian and feeding him romantic lines to say to her. It all comes to a head when Cyrano, Christian, and De Guiche are in a fierce battle on the front lines of the war.

Christian (Blake Jenner) makes his case to Roxanne (Jasmine Cephas Jones) with Cyrano’s (Peter Dinklage) help in new musical (photo by Monique Carboni)

Adapted and directed by Schmidt (All the Fine Boys), who is married to Dinklage, Cyrano is all about the poetry and power of words. Cyrano lives to write letters. When his friend Ragueneau (Nehal Joshi), a pastry chef, is being threatened by one hundred men coming to kill him, Ragueneau explains it’s because of a political poem he wrote. When De Guiche is intrigued by Cyrano’s nose but can’t bring himself to be direct about it, Cyrano says, “You seem at a loss for words and, good sir, you are staring.” But Cyrano doesn’t believe his way with words or a sword (oddly, the two words are anagrams of each other) will capture his true love’s heart. Dinklage (The Station Agent, A Month in the Country) sings in his affecting, compelling low register, “Roxanne, what am I supposed to say? / Words are only glass on a string. / The more I arrange them and line up and change them / The more they mean the same thing.” When he makes the deal with Christian, he says, “I am a poet. My words are wasted now — they need to be — to be spoken aloud. I will make you eloquent and you, you will make me handsome.” The battle scene is particularly poetic, beautifully directed by Schmidt and choreographed by Jeff and Rick Kuperman, with snow falling down as the men and women soldiers say farewell to loved ones, perhaps for the last time.

Christian (Blake Jenner) and Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) face off in New Group world premiere (photo by Monique Carboni)

The supporting cast is solid, led by Josh A. Dawson as Cyrano’s trusted right-hand man, Le Bret; Nehal Joshi as pastry chef and political poet Ragueneau; Grace McLean as Roxanne’s constant chaperone, Marie; Scott Stangland as the actor Montgomery and the cadet Carbon; Christopher Gurr as theater owner Jodelet and the priest; and Hillary Fisher as Orange Girl. Christine Jones and Amy Rubin’s narrow set features a long horizontal wall with sections that open up to reveal a room of chefs baking, a door, and a balcony where Roxanne calls out to Christian, who is coached by Cyrano in his replies. Words cover the wall like it’s a large blackboard; among the only legible phrases is the heartbreaking “And she loved me back,” which also pops up in one of the songs. The music, by twin brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National, and the lyrics, by the National lead singer Matt Berninger and his wife, Carin Besser (who cowrites lyrics for the band), are not as inventive as one might expect from a group with members who specialize in nontraditional melodies and experimentation, whether on an album, in an art installation, or even for an avant-garde opera.

For the show, which was workshopped in 2018 by Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut, to really grab your heart and soul, the audience has to fall in love with Roxanne in order to understand why the Duke, Christian, and Cyrano do. But that never happens. As played by Cephas Jones, there’s nothing that sets Roxanne apart; she seems to be a nice young woman but not a heartthrob that makes men desire her on sight. And by the treacly ending, you’ll be wondering why the brilliant Cyrano ever wanted her in the first place. However, Dinklage’s gripping, poignant performance rises above everything else, making Cyrano well worth seeing despite its flaws.

R.R.R.E.D.: A SECRET MUSICAL

Stephanie Hicks (Marissa Rosen), Victoria O’Hara (Katie Thompson), GJ Crockett (Matt Loehr), and Craig (Kevin Zak) are trying to save the future of redheads in R.R.R.E.D.

DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Saturday – Tuesday through September 11, $39-$79
rrredthemusical.com
www.darylroththeatre.com

In 2005, the Oxford Hair Foundation predicted that the recessive gene that causes red hair will be so diluted by 2060 that redheads will become extinct. (This was later proved false but keeps popping up on the internet every few years.) In the November 2005 South Park episode “Ginger Kids” inspired by that claim, Eric Cartman lambasts redheads (until he seemingly becomes one and wants to save them), saying, “Like vampires, the ginger gene is a curse, and unless we work to rid the earth of that curse, the gingers could envelop our lives in blackness for all time. It is time that we all admit to ourselves that gingers are vile and disgusting. In conclusion, I will leave you with this: If you think that the ginger problem is not a serious one, think again.” The off-Broadway musical R.R.R.E.D. , which stands for the Real Redheaded Revolutionary Evolutionary Defiance, urges us to fight for the preservation of red-haired men, women, and children, holding secret meetings in the DR2 Theatre to spread ways of keeping gingers alive and well across the planet. These gatherings are led by Victoria O’Hara (Katie Thompson, who wrote the music and lyrics and collaborated on the book with Adam Jackman and Patrick Livingston), joined by her energetic, lively assistant, GJ Crockett (Matt Loehr). They are determined to keep red hair flourishing, coming up with a plan in which redheads need to procreate. “Participation is the key to propagation!” she declares, explaining, “Every time a non-redheaded person manages to woo and win a redhead, another baby is born into a world with one fewer redheaded head.”

Victoria O’Hara (Katie Thompson) and GJ Crockett (Matt Loehr) lead a secret meeting at the DR2 Theatre in low-budget musical

A series of “Instructional Tutorial Musical Lessons” (including “Pregnant,” performed by Marissa Rosen as Stephanie Hicks, and “I Like You,” sung by Kevin Zak as Craig) and songs such as “The Rules,” “As Long as It’s Red,” “Revenge,” and “What Good’s a Blonde, Anyway . . .” fight the good fight, but it’s a losing battle. The low-budget, self-effacing show has some very fun moments, but it never comes together to form a cohesive whole. Upon entering the theater, each member of the audience is given a fake name that they must put on their shirt and use instead of their real name — I was Luke Skywalker, while my companion was Elizabeth Perkins — but that conceit just falls by the wayside, never going anywhere. While Thompson (Pump Boys and Dinettes, Big Fish), who evokes a latter-day Kathleen Turner, sports fiery red hair, the other characters don’t. Other elements also lack sense, from wigs to a monitor in the back that depicts photographs and text to support various theories. Director Andy Sandberg (Straight, Application Pending) can’t bring much focus to the show, which has been around since 2008, when an earlier, longer version was presented at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. About twenty-five minutes has been cut from that iteration, but it still is too long. And weekly celebrity guests — Kristen Mengelkoch (Forbidden Broadway) Kate Rockwell (Mean Girls), Christopher Sieber (Shrek the Musical, Tovah Feldshuh (Irena’s Vow) — who sing “Redheaded Stepchild,” feel out of place and gimmicky. In 1988, Tom Robbins wrote in GQ, “Whether they spring from genes disarranged by earthly forces or are ‘planted’ here by overlords from outer space is a matter for scholarly debate. It’s enough for us to recognize that redheads are abnormal beings, bioelectrically connected to realms of strange power, rage, risk, and ecstasy.” Like Robbins, I happen to be a redhead, and, as several characters say in R.R.R.E.D., “My blood bleeds red.” But just as Victoria and GJ are not having much luck saving redheads, it looks like the show itself can’t be saved, as the original closing date of October 21 has been moved up to September 11.

THE BURIAL AT THEBES

The Irish Rep’s version of Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of ANTIGONE continues at the DR2 Theatre through March 6 (photo © Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $70
212-727-2737
www.irishrep.org

In 2003, Dublin’s Abbey Theatre asked poet and translator Seamus Heaney to do a new version of Sophocles’ Antigone, a kind of follow-up to the Irish Nobel laureate’s only other play, The Cure at Troy, a 1990 adaptation of the Greek playwright’s Philoctotes. Heaney, who passed away in August 2013 at the age of seventy-four, hesitated in accepting the request until he found an angle that intrigued him: focusing on the treatment of the body of Polyneices, one of Oedipus’s two sons who killed each other while fighting on opposite sides of battle. King Creon decided to give Etocles a proper hero’s burial, while he ordered that Polyneices was to rot in the desert and that anyone who attempted to bury him would be executed. Heaney was ultimately inspired by his memories of the death of hunger-striking IRA prisoner Francis Hughes in 1981 as well as President George W. Bush’s determination to invade Iraq following 9/11. “Basically Creon turns Polyneices into a non-person, in much the same way as the first internees in Northern Ireland and the recent prisoners in Guantanamo Bay were turned into non-persons,” he said in a 2004 Jayne Lecture he gave at Harvard. “By refusing Polyneices burial, Creon claims ownership of the body and in effect takes control of his spirit, because the spirit will not go to its right home with the dead until the body is buried with due ceremony. When Antigone refuses Creon’s ruling and performs the traditional rites, her protest is therefore a gesture that is as anthropological as it is political, and it was only when I saw it in this light that I found a way out of the cat’s cradle of political arguments and analogies the play has become and could re-approach it as a work atremble with passion, with the human pity and terror it possessed in its original cultural setting.”

Unfortunately, the Irish rep’s current production, its last at the troupe’s temporary home at the DR2 Theatre, doesn’t take full advantage of Heaney’s powerful, poetic words in a staging that is woefully given short shrift, as if cobbled together at the last minute. Three-time Tony winner Tony Walton’s set feels like an afterthought, a tiny space with a couple of rocks, twelve strands of frayed rope descending from above, and a backdrop that changes colors throughout the show’s eighty minutes, occasionally oddly displaying an audience watching from behind. Linda Fisher’s drab costumes and Charlotte Moore’s barely there direction don’t add anything to what should have been a compelling investigation of honor, loyalty, and family. The ethical and moral conflict between Antigone and Creon fails to catch fire; Rebekah Brockman is too meek as the former, while Paul O’Brien, who stepped in late for the previously announced John Cullum and then Larry Bryggman in the role of Creon, never captures the poetry of Heaney’s words. The cast, who all seem to speak in different accents, also features Ciaran Bowling as Haemon, Creon’s son, who is engaged to marry Ismene (Katie Fabel), Antigone’s sister; Winsome Brown as Eurydice, Creon’s wife; Robert Langdon Lloyd as Tiresias, the blind soothsayer; Rod Brogan as the messenger; and Colin Lane, who fares the best as the squirmy guard. “What are Creon’s rights / When it comes to me and mine?” Antigone asks her sister at one point. The same can be asked of Heaney and the audience’s rights from this usually reliable troupe, which has done much better work in its twenty-six-year history.

THE QUARE LAND

Irish Repertory Theatre
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 15, $70
212-727-2737
www.irishrep.org

Something magical happens during the Irish Rep’s revival of John McManus’s The Quare Land. Unfortunately, it’s not the play itself but a bit of mysterious stagecraft. Star Peter Maloney spends the entire show in a cast-iron bathtub — and the bubbles never go away during the ninety minutes. I don’t know which brand of bubbles he uses, but I can’t get the bubbles in my bath to stay afloat for more than a handful of minutes. Otherwise, The Quare Land is a rather ordinary work that offers no new takes on a familiar story. Maloney plays the silly-named Hugh Pugh, an old farmer living in a ramshackle house on the Irish countryside in County Cavan. (The wonderful set is by Charlie Corcoran.) Pugh is relaxing in the tub with his rubber ducky, listening to Bobby Darin on his ancient phonograph, enjoying beer he retrieves via a complex pulley system that brings him bottles from inside a filthy toilet, when the well-dressed Rob McNulty (Rufus Collins) shows up unannounced and walks into the bathroom. McNulty is a real-estate developer who wants to purchase land from Pugh that he didn’t even know he owned, in order to turn a nine-hole golf course into an eighteen-holer to attract professional events. McNulty assumes the sale is a slam dunk, but he can barely get a word in edgewise as Pugh shares stories from his life nonstop, cannily dodging McNulty’s best efforts. The play, directed by Ciaran O’Reilly, starts out well enough, but as it continues, it grows more and more annoying, the plot turning into a stale retread of such films as The Field and Local Hero, except neither character here turns out to be very likable. The play is billed as a “Cantankerous Comedy,” and cantankerous it is, but not in the intended way. Maloney (Outside Mullingar) and Collins (The Royal Family) give fine performances, but the sour script ultimately lets them down. Now, about those bubbles….

THE IRISH REP READING SERIES: CHESTER BAILEY

Reed Birney will take a break from his starring role in IM GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD to participate in Irish Rep Reading Series (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Reed Birney will take a break from his starring role in I’M GONNA PRAY FOR YOU SO HARD to participate in free Irish Rep Reading Series on January 30 with Noah Robbins (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Who: The Irish Repertory Theatre
What: Staged reading of Joseph Dougherty’s Chester Bailey
Where: DR2 Theatre, 103 East 15th St. between Park Ave. South & Irving Pl., 212-727-2737
When: Friday, January 30, free (advance reservations strongly suggested), 3:00
Why: The Irish Rep Reading Series continues with Tony nominee Reed Birney (I’m Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Casa Valentina) and Noah Robbins (Punk Rock, Brighton Beach Memoirs) reading WWII-set drama by Emmy-nominated writer and producer Joseph Dougherty (Thirtysomething, Saving Grace, Digby), directed by Emmy and Tony nominee Ron Lagomarsino (Digby, Driving Miss Daisy, Pretty Little Liars); Irish Rep literary manager Kara Manning explains that the series “gives playwrights, both emerging and more established, the invaluable opportunity to develop their new work in a supportive, safe environment and will also introduce some Irish playwrights, especially those who might not yet have the New York recognition they merit, to an American audience.”