Contemporary Playwright Richard Nelson's Women of a Certain Age is the next Saturday Staged Reading at the Actors Theatre Playhouse, presented on two Saturdays, Sept. 8 and 15, at 7:30 p.m.
Women of a Certain Age is a contemporary family story that takes place around the kitchen table of the Gabriel family of Rhinebeck, N.Y., on Election Night 2016. Waiting for the national election returns to come in, the family gathers for a final meal at their soon-to-be-repossessed old homestead, which is soon passing into strangers' hands.
Amid the chaos, the family prepares a meal together, looks back, and reflects on the drifting nature of “family” in a less and less comprehensible world. It is a play swollen near to bursting with sorrow and comfort, with losses absorbed and yet-to-come, with crushing disappointments but also with stubborn strains of humor and humanity, according to a news release.
Featured in the cast are Lindsay Bartlett, Gini Brosius, Saddie Fischesser, Carrie Kidd, Maggie McGlone-Jennings, and Mark Ziter.
The past is a tangible presence for this family, and the encroaching loss of the house means they have been sorting through bureaus and trunks, turning up long-forgotten pieces of their history. That includes a 1910 issue of Ladies' Home Journal that sparks talk of the ways women have or haven't changed; and Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls, which becomes the source of the evening's menu. In contrast to all the election racket outside, watching this group in this cozy space making shepherd's pie, pouring a beer, or glazing cookies, is quite therapeutic.
Says Nelson, “With The Gabriels, as with my previous series, The Apple Family Plays, I am trying to create something else: an intimate world of very human conversations that you will want to lean forward to witness and overhear, as if you were watching and listening through a half opened window or keyhole. My hope is that with these plays, you will want to actively participate, by leaning in and actively listening.”
The Hollywood Reporter writes that 'The beauty of Nelson's writing is its ability to touch on family and social issues with subtlety and elegance … It's part of the small miracle of this quiet stunner of a drama that it takes us away from our worries about an increasingly uncertain, divided world while immersing us deep in the marrow of it.”
“The playwriting is exquisite,” said Director Sam Pilo. “The evening softly drifts and delicately touches on a variety of recognizable, small family moments we have all experienced, such as filling in the story-gaps in a box of found letters, the solitude and the preparations for a date that is not really a date, having to take part-time housekeeping work at a local hotel not far from the mansion of a wealthy local family who once employed your grandmother as their maid, or the dire financial situations of how affordable health care for the elderly may soon be unaffordable, and the college education of a son is now in jeopardy.
“Richard Nelson weaves an easygoing flow of woes, complaints, accomplishments and desires around the simple action of preparing a meal that speaks to the moment we are all sharing.”