Theater Books for Summer Reading 2026

Happy Semiquincentennial Weekend!  Or at least I hope it is being so for you. This is a stranger summer than usual for me.  My building has scheduled work to be done on our terraces and so the time I’ve been able to spend outside in my seasonal happy place has been restricted. Meanwhile, the number of show openings are fewer than they have been in recent summers which has made me a bit restless. And of course, there’s been all the angst leading up to this weekend’s celebration of 250 years of American democracy. In other words, I’ve needed the comfort of good books more than ever, particularly books about theater. 

But it also means that I’m even happier than usual to share this annual summer reading list with those of you who love theater and find solace in it too. Half of the 16 books below are novels because I love losing myself in fictional worlds about theater but there are also some great biographies and memoirs, and a few other goodies too. So whatever your reading preference there should be something to keep you company between now and Labor Day. In the meantime, my BroadwayRadio boss James Marino and I are once again discussing some of my choices on a special podcast that will be available later this weekend. And now, for the books:

Audition: A Novel by Katie Kitamura  A finalist for several prestigious awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, this literary brain teaser centers around the unsettling interactions between an actress in a major stage production and a young man who may or may not be her son but the author's central theme is the ways in which all of us are always performing for one another 

Bring the House Down: A Novel by Charlotte Runcie Written by an arts journalist, this is a delightful story about two theater critics who find themselves in the midst of a firestorm after one of them pans a show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe but it also fans out into a timely meditation about the role of criticism, a thoughtful debate on cancel culture and a witty satire about the festival itself

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt  Now to be honest, this biography of the playwright Christopher Marlowe is kind of heavy reading for summer but it's also a fascinating look at the creation of British theater in the 16th century and it makes a convincing argument that it was Marlowe—and not William Shakespeare—who really got the ball rolling  

The Dramatic Life of Jonah Penrose: A Novel by Robyn Green This enemies-to-lovers romcom about two super-talented and super hunky British actors who are hot for the same role and for one another is just as steamy and satisfyingly a guilty pleasure as the hit HBO series “Heated Rivalry” 

Flashout: A Novel by Alexis Soloski  Using the knowledge she’s gained during her two decades as a New York Times critic and culture reporter, Soloski has written a tense literary thriller about a woman forced to look back at some unsolved mysteries that occurred in her youth when she got swept up by a cult-like avantgarde theater troupe in the 1970s  

Kids, Wait to You Hear This by Liza Minnelli  As the daughter of Judy Garland and the movie director Vincent Minnelli, this iconic star’s life has always played out in public and so you probably already know its highs (the award winning performances, the celebrity friendships) and its lows (the bad marriages, the drug and alcohol abuse) but the same raw vulnerability that has endeared the now 80-year-old to legions of fans will also pull you in here

Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner Interviews with some 150 people—from the 46-year-old composer’s parents and high school girlfriend to such collaborators as the directors Thomas Kail and Jon Chu—has resulted in a biography that is filled with deeply detailed descriptions about the development of works from In the Heights and Hamilton to the upcoming production of The Warriors, all of which adds up to a must-read

The Mother Act: A Novel by Heidi Reimer I actually found it kind of hard to like either of the main characters in this novel about a famous feminist actress and the daughter she abandons for the sake of her career but I also couldn’t resist being drawn in by the important questions it poses about the personal costs of making art and how those choices affect the art that gets made

Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner by Marc Shaiman  Is there anybody in show business that this versatile music man hasn’t worked with? His memoir is not only stocked with amusingly self-deprecating stories about such hits as Hairspray and misses as Smash (both the TV show and the staged musical) but if you get the audio version you can also hear him break into song, with pals like Christian Borle, Norbert Leo Butz, Megan Hilty and Jennifer Lewis joining in. 

The Periodic Table of Broadway Musicals: An Illustrated Guide to 118 Essential Musicals by Andrew Gerle and Joseph Zellnick  When you get right down to it, this is just another annotated list of great shows but this married couple, both of whom have deep roots in musical theater, have organized their list by adapting the chart of scientific elements that you used to see on the wall of your high school chemistry classroom and it’s fun to figure out which shows you’d gather together under such categories as 'The Broadway Operas' or 'The Leading Ladies Series'

Public/Private: My Life with Joe Papp at The Public Theater by Gail Merrifield  In addition to being the widow of the legendary founder of the Public Theater, Merrifield was the Public’s first dramaturg and served for many years as its Director of New Plays and Musicals Development and while her memoir is clearly a loving tribute to her late husband, its best parts reveal her own significant contributions to the creation of such shows as The Normal Heart and The Mystery of Edwin Drood

She’s a Lamb!: A Novel by Meredith Hambrock If Norma Desmond and Tom Ripley had a child, it would be Jessamyn St. Germain, the main character in this oh-no-she-didn’t thriller about an actress with delusions of grandeur who is willing to do anything to land the starring role of Maria in a regional Canadian production of The Sound of Music

The Show Goes on by Ron Fassler  This delicious celebration of the performers who serve as understudies, stand-bys and replacements is filled with great interviews and anecdotes about the people who actually do keep shows going on 

Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy by Daniel Okrent  Yes; it’s one more book about the revered composer but this one by the longtime culture critic (and my former work colleague) digs deep into the connection between the songs Sondheim wrote and his life, including his notoriously complicated relationship with his mother

Too Soon: A Novel by Betty Shamieh The struggles of three generations of Palestinian women both in their homeland and here in the U.S. are framed by the efforts of the youngest, an American-born theater director, as she tries to stage an avant-garde production of Hamlet in the West Bank

Wise Children: A Novel by Angela Carter People have been telling me for years that I should read this novel about an eccentric theatrical family whose members include legendary showgirls, a popular game show host and the leading Shakespearean actor of his generation; and now I'm telling you that you should read it 

This marks the 20th time I've shared one of these lists and I'm going to celebrate that in a separate post but right now below, as always, are the links to my suggestions from previous years:

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Tuning Into "ll:Girls:ll ll:Chance:ll ll:Music:ll"

Maybe it’s because I live with a musician but ll:Girls:ll ll:Chance:ll ll:Music:ll, the new play with music by Eisa Davis that opened this week at the Vineyard Theatre, struck a deeper chord with me than have most of the now seemingly endless stream of plays centered around the coming of age of a group of precocious young women.

The four teens in ll:Girls:ll ll:Chance:ll ll:Music:ll (and no, I don’t know how to say the title out loud either) are participants in a summer music program in Berkeley, just as Davis herself was as a kid (click here to read more about the real program). 

Here all the girls are gifted but as is customary with fictional quartets ranging from Dorothy and her three pals in “The Wizard of Oz” to Sarah Jessica Parker and her trio of besties in “Sex and the City,” each of these girls represents a different approach to music—and to life.  

Fax is a classicist, literally: she’s training to be an opera singer and is determined to perform all the notes exactly as they’re written. Margot is a free-spirited drummer who loves to improvise and has an almost mystical relationship with music. Rile is an ambitious pianist and eager to do whatever it takes to succeed. Meanwhile, Clementine, the most musically ambidextrous of the group who plays a variety of instruments, just enjoys playing. 

But because they are caught in that confusing middle ground between girlhood and full womanhood, each of them is also dealing with other issues that include eating disorders, sexual identity, suicidal ideation and in one case the search for a birth father.  

Although we don’t see their parents, it's clear that they run the gamut from warm and supportive to careless and even remote, and that all are affecting how their children define themselves. As the play unfolds over an intermission-less 1 hour and 45 minutes, the girls come together in various constellations to help one another, to challenge one another, to undermine one another and ultimately to change one another.

Davis and her director Pam MacKinnon set themselves (and their casting director) a big challenge in finding four actors who could really play their instruments and convincingly play youngsters probably a decade younger than they actually are. And they somehow pulled it off.  

The entire cast is fantastic—they particularly shine in an improvised jam session about halfway through the show—but I found myself unable to take my eyes off Hillary Fisher, who has the same kind of gawky charm and clarion voice that has endeared Sutton Foster to so many fans.

The creative team is pitch perfect too. Particularly the gorgeous lighting by Russell H. Champa and the all-important sound design by Fan Zhang.

Not everything works. The girls are dealing with so many issues that too many of them get short shrift and it can seem as though Davis, who is currently working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on the upcoming Warriors which is scheduled to debut next spring, forgot to delete unnecessary storylines as she revised drafts of the script. 

Still, the central point remains that one of the hardest lessons we can learn when we're young is that there are many ways to define success. And as I’ve learned from my husband and his musician friends, the trick is finding your own rhythm and then marching—or even stumbling through—to the beat of your own drum.

 

 

 

"The Receptionist" Revival Misses Its Call

 

Shows get revived for all kinds of reasons. Maybe they were under appreciated in the past. Or they may have something particularly relevant to say about current events. A director may have come up with an innovative way to tell the old story. Or a producer may believe that a familiar comfort-food title will sell tickets. And sometimes a star wants to take a crack at an iconic role, to give a boost to a favorite one or just to try something different from what they've done before.

As its name suggests, the Second Stage theater company was created to do revivals that would give living American playwrights a second chance to get their work onto a New York stage. And right now 2ndStage, as it likes to bill itself, is having a terrific success with a star-studded revival of Becky Shaw, Gina Gionfriddo’s 2009 Pulitzer finalist centered around a bad blind date and the interlocking network of unhappy people connected to it. I had a terrific time at this dark comedy, liking it even more than I did when I first saw it back in 2008 (click here to read my earlier review).  

And it isn't just me who's feeling that way either. This new Becky Shaw has picked up nominations for Best Revival from the Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle and the Tony nominators. The New York Drama Critics Circle gave its Best Individual Performance award to the production’s star Alden Ehrenreich.

Meanwhile, I was looking forward to seeing what the company would do with The Receptionist, a cautionary tale by Adam Bock that shook me when I saw it in 2007 with Jayne Houdyshell in the title role and that is now being revived with the two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran. You wouldn’t normally expect to see the easy-going Houdyshell and the high-spirited Finneran going up for the same role but I figured it would be fun to see what different choices such very different actors might make.  

The Receptionist, which opened at the Pershing Square Signature Center this week, is set in the kind of brightly-lit and blandly decorated office that might serve as the gathering spot in a TV sitcom. Its titular character, a woman named Beverly, would fit right into that kind of show too. She’s the office busybody, nudge, and self-appointed social activities organizer. 

When the play opens her boss is unusually late but that means that Beverly and her co-worker Lorraine have more time to gossip. When a man from the central office arrives, Beverly tries to cover for the boss’ absence. Lorraine flirts with the guy. So far, so sitcom. But then about a third of the way into this tight 80-minute play one of them makes a casual comment about a recent meeting that sends the whole thing careening into the kind of storyline that might turn up on an episode of the sci-fi series “Black Mirror.”

The two things I remember most from seeing The Receptionist in 2007 was how knocked out I was by Houdyshell’s performance and how shaken I was by the growing sense of unease as it became clearer to me what the business of the office was and how easy it can be for nice, likeable people to do really horrible things. Alas, I didn’t feel any of that while watching this revival. 

Finneran is a very gifted comedienne and director Sarah Benson gives the actress plenty of room to do what she does best, which means lots of little bits of comic business that drew big laughs from the audience at the performance my theatergoing buddy Bill and I attended (click here to read an interview with the actress). But Finneran seemed a lot less sure of herself as the tone shifted into more serious territory and our view of Beverly becomes more complicated. And that unbalanced the whole evening for me.

The play itself is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago when the recent wounds of 9/11 had the country debating how far the government should go to keep Americans safe, what the definition of safety should be and how much responsibility each of us should bear for the actions taken to secure it. With its emphasis on the humor that admittedly was always there, this production makes it OK to smile and then look away, to pretend that things may not be as bad as they seem. It’s taken the cautionary out of the tale.

Thrilling New Life for "Death of a Salesman"

One of the things we theater obsessives love to do is argue about which is the greatest American play. I’m a Tennessee Williams stan and so I always try to get A Streetcar Named Desire into the mix. But I’m also the kind of traditionalist who feels that respect must be paid to Eugene O’Neill so I also throw in The Iceman Cometh. At the same time, I do acknowledge the gamechanger that Tony Kushner’s Angels in America has been and so I can make the case for that too. And there’s no way I’m going to let any debate like this go on without offering up something by August Wilson; you can pick your favorite but I’m going with his and mine: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which is scheduled for a revival later this month.  

However, I just saw the Joe Mantello-directed revival of Death of a Salesman that opened this week at the Winter Garden Theatre with Nathan Lane as the doomed Willy Loman and Laurie Metcalf as his long-suffering wife Linda and it left no doubt in my mind that THE Great American Play is this 1949 masterpiece by Arthur Miller. 

Salesman is no newcomer to my list of great play contenders. In high school I did a project that had me reading all of Miller's plays and even as a 16-year-old, I was knocked out by this tragedy about a 63-year-old traveling salesman who finds himself at the end of the road, no longer able to close deals or to pay his bills or to pretend that he has prepared the two sons he so loves to make something more of their lives.  

Over the years, I've seen a half dozen or so productions of this play. And I did an episode on it for All the Drama, my podcast on Pulitzer Prize-winning plays (click here to listen to that). And yet, Mantello's production has made me appreciate Death of A Salesman in a whole new and more visceral way.

Now I will admit that I was dubious when I first heard that Mantello was taking an approach to the play that would do away with a traditional set. And although I knew that Nathan Lane was a good actor, I had some questions about whether he could pull off this Mount Everest of a role. But in stripping the play down to its most essential elements, they have made it live up to its name. This entire three-hour production is set in the titular character's mind in the moments before his death. And it’s shattering. 

It actually helps that Lane, perhaps our greatest living comic actor, plays Willy (click here to read an interview with him). For even though Lane makes his entrance weighed down by large suitcases just like every other actor who's ever played Willy, I sensed the audience at the performance I attended waiting for him to lighten things up with one of his trademark ad libs or at least an ingratiating smirk. But when Lane did neither and instead dug deep into Willy’s sorrows, relentlessly snuffing out all optimism, I also sensed the audience gradually accepting that for many people like Willy the American Dream has drifted out of reach. 

Laurie Metcalf stays closer to her brand. Her Linda is tougher than many of the others I’ve seen but Metcalf makes her a fierce guardian for the man she loves even though she knows that he’s not the man either of them wants him to be so she is willing to do anything to hold him up, even when it means putting herself down.

The other two major characters are the couple’s sons Biff, a former high school football star gone to seed; and Happy, the baby brother who has inherited his father’s delusion that affability is the golden ticket to success. They’re not easy roles to calibrate and I’m usually disappointed by one or the other. But here, although I’d assume that the actors playing them had been hired for their TV followings—Christopher Abbott broke out in the Lena Dunham series “Girls” and Ben Ahlers has recently become celebrated as the 'Clock Twink' on “The Gilded Age”—both more than hold their own. 

At first I worried that Abbott's Biff seemed too drawn into himself almost to the point of catatonia but that makes all the more powerful his speech in the play’s penultimate scene when he forces the family to face the uncomfortable truths they've been trying to avoid. And Ahlers (click here to read more about him) deftly balances his own innate charisma and Happy's superficial charms in a star-making performance.

Jack O’Brien, a Tony winner for productions ranging from Hairspray to The Coast of Utopia, once said that when everything in a production works, the credit has to go to its director. And so despite all the talent onstage the MVP here is Mantello. 

The way the director has staged the scenes of Willy’s past and present— aided by Jack Knowles’ exquisite lighting and Mikaal Sulaiman’s haunting sound design—flows back and forth more clearly than they have in other productions, evoking the free association of memories and thoughts as they rub against one another in Willy's mind. 

And Mantello has added subtle contemporary touches by adding anachronistic props such as Willy's young boss's Starbucks-like coffee cup and by casting black actors as the Loman’s next door neighbors, whose successes make Willy even more uncomfortable, each quietly suggesting the timelessness and timeliness of the play.

But when all is said and done, it’s the text that continues to make this show so great. It’s become fashionable to bash Miller (hello John Proctor is the Villain) but even back in the glow of midcentury American might, Miller knew and tried to caution the rest of us about the fragile promises of the American Dream. 

There are stories of how middle-aged men who attended the original production sat in their seats and cried long after the curtain came down. During last week’s curtain call, the old guy sitting next to me brushed away tears too. I'm not one who usually cries in the theater but there was moisture in my eyes too.  

Giving a Head Pat to "Dog Day Afternoon"

Just about everyone—and here I mean most of the critics—seems to have something bad to say about Dog Day Afternoon, the new Stephen Adly Guirgis adaptation of the 1975 movie about a bank robbery gone wrong that opened at the August Wilson Theatre this week (click here to listen to a quick summary of complaints about the show). But to my surprise, I had a pretty good time.

Maybe that's a result of expectations. Sidney Lumet’s movie and its iconic performances by Al Pacino and John Cazale have been beloved by generations of moviegoers (including me) and what seems to have most disappointed the people who don’t like the staged version is that it’s different from the film. But if you want an exact replica of the movie maybe you should just stay home and stream the movie. 

The story is the same in both versions cause each is based on a real-life crime chronicled in the old Life magazine (click here to read that). Here's the gist of it: a couple of guys named Sonny and Sal enter a Brooklyn bank around closing time on a hot summer day so that they can steal money to pay for the gender reassignment surgery for the person Sonny calls his wife but they end up bungling the robbery and have to hold the bank staff hostage until they can figure out how to get away. So screen and stage share the same narrative but it’s the tone that differs.

Before I saw the show, a friend emailed to say that it was “extremely goofy.” That’s not the adjective I’d choose but Guirgis and his director Rupert Goold do lean into the humor of two losers trying to pull off a simple heist. And a few days before the show opened the New York Times ran a story (click here for it) saying that the producers had temporarily barred Guirgis from the theater after he clashed with one of the show’s main producers.

But anyone who hands scriptwriting duties to Guirgis, the author of such irreverent plays as The Motherfucker With the Hat and Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, should know that they’re going to get a Guirgis show. And that means lots of characters, most of them struggling to make it on the margins of society and nearly all of them constantly wisecracking while doing it.  

This Dog Day stars the longtime friends Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, now probably best known for their roles as the dead brother and the tetchy cousin on the TV show “The Bear” (click here to read more about them). But Guirgis doesn’t really believe in star vehicles. His years as the in-house playwright for the LAByrinth Theater Company have instilled in him a love of stories filled with lots of colorful characters and a sense of duty to make sure that each of them gets at least a moment or two to shine. So they get backstories. They get dialogue. They get jokes. 

Some of the humor works. It’s fun to see Jessica Hecht who so often plays mousy characters getting to play a mouthy one as the head bank teller who challenges the robbers before eventually bonding with them. But some of the humor doesn’t work. Having the shot bank guard who has been lying on the stage for most of the first act rouse himself to make a lame joke about donuts isn’t worthy of even the dumbest TV sitcom.

On the other hand, Guirgis refuses to play Sonny’s relationship with a trans woman for laughs as the movie did with the straight actor Chris Sarandon flouncing around and crying hysterically in a way that made me uncomfortable even when I first saw it. Here the nonbinary actor Esteban Andres Cruz plays the character as a dry-eyed real person and gets to wisecrack just like everyone else. 

Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach make their characters their own too, not ignoring what Pacino and Cazale did with the roles but not imitating them either. Where Pacino’s Sonny was a fireball of angst, Bernthal’s is more boyishly ingratiating, which made it easier to understand why the hostages would eventually become so protective of him. John Ortiz, a frequent Guirgis collaborator, is also winning as the unflappable detective who negotiates with Sonny.

Now I’m not trying to change anyone's mind about the show but I am saying that if you're curious about the story or want to see the two guys from “The Bear” or simply want an entertaining evening out, you might find this Dog to have just enough bite.

Chilly Thoughts on "Cold War Choir Practice"

Most of the reviews for Cold War Choir Practice devote most of their word count to laying out its multi-pronged plot which includes Soviet spies, former Black Panthers, Regan-era conservatives, the dangers of wellness cults, the joys of roller skating and the comforts of choral singing. I’m going to skip all that. In part because I’m still trying to figure out how all those things hang together—and how I feel about this show, which opened this week at MCC Theater after a brief run in Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival last year.

I should be an ideal candidate for this play because when I was in grade school I—like its 10-year-old main character Meek—was a little back girl who thought I could resolve the major geopolitical conflict of the day. I wrote a letter to then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev telling him that I thought both American kids and Russian kids wanted peace between our two countries so that we could grow up without the fear that they were going to bomb one another—and us—into oblivion. My mother, probably worried about McCarthyism-like repercussions, made me tear up the letter.  

But nowadays there seems to be a growing interest in that midcentury period in which young people in the U.S. and Russia were trying to sort out the future. The Paul Thomas Anderson film “One Battle After Another,” a frontrunner to win the Best Picture Oscar this weekend, looks back affectionately at American radicals from the '60s like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. Lauren Yee’s Mother Russia, which is currently running at the Signature Center, imagines what might have happened to young Russians when the Cold War ended. Meanwhile Choir Practice wrestles with the side effects of all those changes.  

Each of these fictional representations wraps itself in absurdist humor and I’m not sure what to make of that or what to take away from them in our current not-much-to-laugh-about times. Choir Practice’s playwright Ro Reddick seems to flirt with the idea that whatever happens, the best that regular folks can hope for is to negotiate some wiggle room for their loved ones and to find  something to watch on TV. Which strikes me as cold comfort.

That’s not to say that there aren’t things to enjoy in Reddick’s play, which just won the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for this year’s best play by a female identifying playwright (click here to read an interview with her). Or that there aren’t similar pleasures to be found in the supple staging by Knud Adams. 

Additionally, as the title hints, there are lots of songs in this show, which bills itself as a play with music. And all of them are composed by Reddick. They’re tuneful, clever and sprightly performed largely by a trio headed by the always amusing Grace McLean.

The rest of the cast is good too, particularly Alana Raquel Bowers, as convincing as an adult can be as Meek; Will Cobbs as her passionate ex-Panther dad who runs the neighborhood skating rink; Lizan Mitchell, having a great time as Meek’s no-nonsense granny; and Crystal Finn, a hoot as the zombied-out white wife of Meek’s conservative uncle. Most of their actions are over-the-top cartoonish but the actors commit to them as though they’re performing Chekhov. 

Like the movie “One Battle After Another,” Choir Practice ends with a sliver of hope that the next generation really will figure out a way to save the world. Fingers crossed that they do.

 

 

 

 

Real Families Really Matter in “The Reservoir” and “You Got Older”

Ever since Sophocles put the fall of the House of Oedipus onstage, the theatrical canon has been chock-a-block with unhappy families. And that makes sense because they make for good drama. But despite the failings they may have, few real families are so totally dysfunctional and so I found it refreshing to see two recent shows centering their stories around the kinds of supportive—even if flawed—families that most of have or are struggling to create.

Josh, the central character in The Reservoir, a new dramedy by the young playwright Jake Brasch that’s now playing at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater, is a mess. Even though he’s only 20, Josh has been in and out of rehab for years and was recently kicked out of NYU. When the play opens, he’s just coming out of a bender and, as he explains to the audience, he has no memory of how he’s ended up sprawled alongside the titular waterway back in his hometown of Denver. 

His mom is so fed up with Josh that she requires him to take a Breathalyzer test before she’ll let him into the house. So Josh turns to his grandparents for emotional support. But they’re by no means perfect. His sweet cookie-baking grandmother Irene is an evangelical who’s uneasy with the fact that Josh is gay; and her husband Hank is trying to cope with Irene’s descent into dementia by downing beers and watching junk TV. 

On the other side are Josh’s Jewish grandfather Shrimpy, who is working hard to fend off the ravages of aging by acting younger than he is, including preparing for a second bar mitzvah. And finishing up the quartet is Shrimpy’s long divorced wife Bev, a retired career woman who takes pride in being the cool grandparent but who is guarding some secrets of her own. What unites all four is their love for Josh and their desire to help him stay sober.

Now I know much of this sounds grim but Brasch, aided by Shelley Butler’s simple but buoyant staging, interlaces the serious themes of alcoholism and dementia with humor that is alternately heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny. 

It would have been easy for the grandparents to disappear into old-people clichés as so often happens but here they are played by some of the best older actors in the business, with Mary Beth Peil as Irene, Peter Maloney as Hank, Chip Zien as Shrimpy and most especially Caroline Aaron as Bev, all investing their characters with a precise admixture of fortitude and vulnerability,  Meanwhile, Heidi Armbruster and Matthew Saldívar are just as good in a variety of smaller supporting roles. 

But this is Josh’s play and Noah Galvin channels all of his own affability into portraying a guy who knows that he can get by on his charm but who is also frightened that he may have little more than that to offer. The ending isn’t entirely happy but there’s great satisfaction in watching as both Josh and his grandparents benefit from leaning on and propping up one another.

Mae, the main character in the revival of Clare Barron’s You Got Older, which opened this week at the Cherry Lane Theatre, goes through a similar experience. After her life crumbles—a bad affair results in her losing her married boyfriend, her job at a law firm and her apartment—Mae also finds herself returning home, in this case to Washington State. And she too finds an ailing relative, her widowed father who has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer.

I didn’t see the Obie-winning original production of this play that ran at HERE Arts Center in 2014 and helped to establish Barron as an exciting and distinctive voice in the American theater but the unique mix of You Got Older’s dark humor and genuine open-heartedness make clear what that initial fuss was all about. 

In her 30s, Mae is older than The Reservoir’s Josh and she isn’t as troubled as he is but she’s still struggling to move ahead. And her futile coping mechanisms from making up erotic S&M fantasies—which play out on stage—to hooking up with an oddball former schoolmate she barely remembers aren’t working. 

Instead what sustains her are the laconic conversations she has with her dad (here played by the always terrific Peter Friedman) and the amusingly banal exchanges traded with her three siblings as they all gather around their father’s hospital bed.

Alia Shawkat’s performance as Mae didn't grab me at first (click here to read more about the actor who is making her stage debut in this play) but the more I thought about it and about Anne Kauffman’s overall shrewd direction the more their deadpan approach seemed to accurately and viscerally evoke the numbness that so often creeps in when life beats us up. 

I suspect that what makes The Reservoir and You Got Older work so well is that their playwrights are drawing directly from their own life experiences. In their Playbill bio, Brasch, who is in recovery, dedicates the play to their “Grandma B.” and in earlier interviews, Barron has said she wrote her play while going through a medical crisis with her own dad. Both their plays are bearing testament to the existence of functional families—onstage and off—and the power of that unconditional love.