Tag Archives: Jill Eikenberry

THE NEW GROUP OFF STAGE: EVENING AT THE TALK HOUSE REUNION READING

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.

THE NEW GROUP OFFSTAGE: TWO BY WALLACE SHAWN

Who: Matthew Broderick, Jill Eikenberry, John Epperson, Larry Pine, Wallace Shawn, Claudia Shear, Annapurna Sriram, Michael Tucker; Kristen Johnston, Lili Taylor, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Thomas Bradshaw, Liam Craig, Melissa Errico, Carlos Leon, Emily Cass McDonnell, Maulik Pancholy, Stephen Park, Bill Sage
What: The New Group reunion readings of two plays by Wallace Shawn
Where: “The New Group Off Stage”
When: Wednesday, October 28, $25, 7:00, and Thursday, October 29, $25, 7:00 (available for viewing through November 29)
Why: In his 2011 essay “Why I Call Myself a Socialist: Is the World Really a Stage?,” beloved playwright, actor, and voice artist Wallace Shawn explains, “We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there’s a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he’s playing himself in his daily life, he’s playing a part, he’s performing, just as he’s performing when he plays a part on stage. He knows that when he’s on stage performing, he’s in a sense deceiving his friends in the audience less than he does in daily life, not more, because on stage he’s disclosing the parts of himself that in daily life he struggles to hide. He knows, in fact, that the role of himself is actually a rather small part, and that when he plays that part he must make an enormous effort to conceal the whole universe of possibilities that exists inside him.”

It’s inconceivable that you’re unfamiliar with the cuddly, adorable, shaggy-haired Shawn, who has appeared in more than one hundred films, including numerous Woody Allen movies, as well as voicing Rex in the Toy Story franchise and portraying a fictionalized version of himself in Louis Malle’s reality-busting My Dinner with Andre, in which he shares a meal with theater director Andre Gregory. Shawn’s most famous performance is, no doubt, as Sicilian mastermind Vizzini in Rob Reiner’s 1987 fairy-tale classic, The Princess Bride. The scenes between Shawn as Vizzini and wrestling legend Andre the Giant as his cohort Fezzik are among the film’s most treasured. (My Movie with Andre?) Shawn, the son of famed New Yorker editor William Shawn and journalist Cecille Shawn, is also an esteemed playwright, winning an Obie in 1974 for Our Late Night and earning kudos galore for 1996’s The Designated Mourner, which, in several productions, was directed by Gregory, with Shawn playing Jack in stage and radio iterations.

In the age of coronavirus, with theaters shuttered, Shawn reunited last month with the cast of The Princess Bride for a virtual reading and discussion benefiting the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Now the New Group is celebrating him with “The New Group Off Stage: Two by Wallace Shawn,” a pair of live, virtual readings of productions the company has previously staged. First up, on October 28, is 2017’s Evening at the Talk House, which in my review I said was an “utterly delightful, deliciously wicked black comedy, one of the most gregarious shows you’re ever likely to see, despite its dark undertones.” As you walked into the Signature’s Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, the actors were circulating on the set at the center, and the audience was invited to speak with them, joining a small, intimate cocktail party before the main event. The original all-star cast is back for the reading — Matthew Broderick, Jill Eikenberry, John Epperson, Larry Pine, Claudia Shear, Annapurna Sriram, Michael Tucker, and Shawn — but that preliminary interaction will be gone, changing the dynamic between audience and performer even more than in most Zoom renditions.

The next night, October 29, the New Group will present Shawn’s 1985 play, Aunt Dan and Lemon, which the company revived in 2004 at the Acorn Theatre; back for the virtual show are Kristen Johnston as Aunt Dan and Lili Taylor as Lemon along with Maulik Pancholy, Marcia Stephanie Blake, Liam Craig, Melissa Errico, Carlos Leon, Bill Sage, Emily Cass McDonnell, Stephen Park, and Thomas Bradshaw replacing Isaach De Bankole and Layla Khoshnoudi stepping in for Brooke Sunny Moriber. Ten percent of the proceeds of the Talk House reading will go to City Harvest, while the same amount of the Aunt Dan proceeds will go to the Center for Constitutional Rights. (Both readings will be available for viewing through November 29.) The New Group’s virtual pandemic programming has featured excellent reunion readings of The True and The Jacksonian in addition to the ongoing “Why We Do It” interview series with such alums as Cynthia Nixon, Bobby Cannavale, Edie Falco, Suzanne Vega, and Natasha Lyonne; here’s hoping that Shawn soon tells us why he does it. (My Dinner with Wallace, anyone?)

FERN HILL

Close friends gather to talk about their future together in (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Close friends gather to talk about their future together in Michael Tucker’s Fern Hill (photo by Carol Rosegg)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 27, $75.50
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

The Big Chill meets Cocoon and the Friends episode “The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break” in Michael Tucker’s wonderfully spry Fern Hill, which opened tonight at 59E59 in its New York City premiere. The play takes place at a farmhouse called Fern Hill, owned by Sunny (Jill Eikenberry) and Jer (Mark Blum). They have invited two other couples, longtime friends Billy (Mark Linn-Baker) and Michiko (Jodi Long) and Vincent (John Glover) and Darla (Ellen Parker), to celebrate the men’s milestone birthdays and also discuss the possibility of all six of them living together at the farmhouse, enjoying life and caring for one another as they face the inevitable: old age, sickness, and death. Jer, a philosopher and writer, is seventy that day; Billy, who is in a semi-successful classic rock band, will turn sixty the following week; and painter Vincent will hit the big eight-oh in a few months. The usually stoned Billy, always quick with a joke, refers to the three of them as “the father, the son, and the holy shit.” The six musketeers talk about wine, clam sauce, drugs, music, new hips, bourbon, art, and sex — they have a lot to say about sex, as the three couples are still getting busy in bed, apparently on a near-nightly basis. “What do you say, darling? Shall I bend you over the plow for a few minutes before we start dinner?” Jer asks Sunny.

One of the central questions is whether they will refer to their new living arrangements as an orphanage or a commune, almost as if they were children or young adults again. As Dylan Thomas wrote in his 1945 memory poem “Fern Hill,” which was published in his book Deaths and Entrances: “And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns / About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, / In the sun that is young once only, / Time let me play and be / Golden in the mercy of his means.” It’s all fun and games until an affair comes to light; the sexual betrayal has an immediate impact not only on that couple but on the future of all six of them. “How is it that we could be married for all these years and had sex — what? — fifty thousand times? — and still be so fucking dumb about it?” Sunny declares at the end of the first act.

A promising weekend turns sour for Jer (Mark Blum) and Sunny (Jill Eikenberry) in New York premiere at 59E59 (photo by Carol Rosegg)

It’s genuinely refreshing to watch six older, mature men and women discuss sex, sharing how often they get it and how good — or not so good — it can be. Not everyone is comfortable delving into the gory details, but these friends have long ago decided not to keep any secrets from one another, even about what’s going on under the covers, especially if they’re going to be spending their golden years together, living side-by-side-by-side. Jessica Parks’s kitchen set is charming and welcoming, and director Nadia Tass (Malcolm, e-baby) provides just the right gentle touches to Tucker’s (The M Spot, Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy) sharp dialogue. What could have been pompous and doctrinaire — listening to seemingly well-off drunk and high people theorize on how great their lives are — could have been torture, but instead it’s illuminating and insightful.

The chemistry among the stellar cast is superb, starting with Obie and Emmy winner Eikenberry (Lemon Sky, The Kid), Tucker’s wife and LA Law costar, whose vulnerability is the key to the drama, and she displays it beautifully, her youthful spirit intoxicating; a terrific Linn-Baker (Perfect Strangers, On the Twentieth Century) offers the comic relief, Obie winner Blum (Mozart in the Jungle, Gus and Al) is the dour naysayer, Long (Flower Drum Song, Long Story Short) is smart and alluring, Tony winner Glover (Smallville, Love! Valour! Compassion!) is as ineffable as ever, and Parker (The Heidi Chronicles, 20th Century Blues) is as steady as they come. It often feels like they’re six real friends hanging out, not six actors performing a fictional work to an audience. The ending is liable to lead to arguments about which characters are right, which are wrong, who gets off easy, and what will happen next; a few days after having seen the show, I’m still debating with the person I went with. And when theater can have that kind of an effect on you while also being vastly entertaining, it has more than done its job.

EVENING AT THE TALK HOUSE

A veteran cast looks at the past, present, and future of the theater in EVENING AT THE TALK HOUSE (photo by Monique Carboni)

The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 12, $100-$120
www.thenewgroup.org

“We need more plays!” Nellie (Jill Eikenberry) cries out in the New Group’s marvelous production of Evening at the Talk House, making its U.S. premiere at the Signature Center through March 12. That sentiment couldn’t be more true, especially if they’re such works as Wallace Shawn’s utterly delightful, deliciously wicked black comedy, one of the most gregarious shows you’re ever likely to see, despite its dark undertones. The audience enters the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre directly onto Derek McLane’s inviting set, where the all-star cast is mingling in the main meeting room of the Talk House, a club where New York’s literati partied once upon a time. The audience sits on rising rows on two sides of the stage, but before taking your seat, you can mix with the actors, enjoy gummy worms and marshmallow hors d’oeuvres, and sip colored sparkling water from plastic cups. A group of colleagues has gathered at their old hot spot, the Talk House, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening night of Midnight in a Clearing with Moon and Stars, a fondly recalled critical and popular failure by playwright Robert (Matthew Broderick), now a successful TV writer. He is joined by star Tom (Larry Pine), composer Ted (John Epperson), costume designer Annette (Claudia Shear), and producer Bill (Michael Tucker), along with longtime Talk House host Nellie and server Jane (Annapurna Sriram), who regularly took great care of them ten years before. There is also an unexpected guest, Dick (director and playwright Shawn), a sad, bedraggled shell of a man who thought he should have gotten the Midnight part that ultimately went to Tom. The show begins with an extraordinary, and lengthy, monologue by Robert, making direct eye contact with nearly everyone in the audience as he fills in the details of who everyone is (and was) as well as what has become of the theater in this ostensibly realistic yet unsettling somewhat parallel universe. “At that time, you see . . . theater played a somewhat larger part in the life of our city than it does now,” he says. “A decline in the theater-going impulse could in a way be seen as a small price to pay for the rather substantial benefit derived from entering into an era that quite a few people would describe as much more tranquil and much more agreeable that the one that preceded it. . . . Because what exactly was ‘theater,’ really, when you actually thought about it?” It isn’t long before Robert discovers that this new era is not quite as tranquil and agreeable as he thought, as Shawn slyly injects some frightening twists that go by all too smoothly, highlighting how increasingly easy it is to accept monstrous horrors in our everyday life. Is this our world? Or a wryly distorted funhouse mirror of it?

Dick (Wallace Shawn) and Robert (Matthew Broderick) reminisce over old times in New Group production of Shawn play (photo by Monique Carboni)

Evening at the Talk House unfolds in a kind of near-future alternate reality where the “walls have ears.” In describing the setting of Midnight, Robert explains that it took place “in a sort of imaginary kingdom that predated history altogether or stood to one side of it, at any rate.” Although Shawn wrote Talk House several years ago, it prefigures the Trump era, as the president threatens to cut arts funding and fiercely battles a free press. “I want the old days back! Where are they? Where have they gone?” Dick, wearing pajamas, his face battered and beaten, says. “The old days were wonderful days! And they were better for me — I mean, personally, you see, they were much better for me.” There’s no room anymore for nostalgia in this world, which has changed so drastically even if not so overtly. Both the old days and the new days seem good for Shawn, who has written such previous plays as Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Designated Mourner, cowrote and costarred in Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre, and has memorably appeared in such films as Heaven Help Us, The Princess Bride, and Radio Days. In Evening, Shawn’s writing, acting, and direction are impeccable; the play is like a poignant short story come to life, with well-developed characters and sharply unpredictable dialogue. The acting is excellent all around, a mostly veteran cast clearly having a grand old time, glorying in their love of theater even as their characters have experienced its downfall. Audiences can rejoice as well; with shows such as Evening at the Talk House, the theater is far from a thing of the past.