The Assembled Parties

Saw this show tonight - very smart and brilliantly written. Clear winner for the Set Design by Santo Loquasto. Jessica Hecht and Judith Light are funny and gripping at the same time. Certainly makes a great case against Vanya for the Best Play this season.

Downside: Not clear as to what happened to characters Mort and Ben. The ending would have been greater if Richard Greenberg wrote having the Red Ruby necklace as present to Faye (Judith Light) from Julie (Jessica Hecht) and reveal that she secretly purchased the heirloom to protect family tradition. Now that would have been a TERRIFIC ending!

Vanya for me is still the one to beat.

Can anyone please post spoilers?? I'm extremely curious about the story.

Considering Act 1 takes place in the 1980 and Act 2 takes place in 2000 (a fact that is in the published synopsis of the show) and some of the characters are older adults in Act 1, I think it's pretty safe to assume that some of them will not be returning for Act 2 as their time will have passed. This is nothing that's central to the plot. It's not spoiling anything for you unless you're not intelligent enough to put 2 and 2 together on your own without someone teaching you how to add.

And spanker, while your sarcasm is HILARIOUS, I suggest that you zip your lip. When/if you see the show, you will (or hopefully should) understand why that dress having pockets is problematic for the time period. And if you don't, then clearly historical accuracy is not something that concerns you when you see theater. There is a whole section of Act 2 devoted to talking about how this dress was made, but never in a million years woud a dress in this style have had pockets. Just something that annoyed me, but go ahead and make fun of me for caring.

Why did the parties decide to assemble?

I was actually just kidding. It is such a boring and uninspired title.

Some affecting moments near the end, but overall, loquacious, hokey and soap opera-ish. Several characters and storylines seem underdeveloped and unfocused. It's not as aggresively annoying/obnoxious/dull as most of the author's works, but I wouldn't call it good, either. In evidence again here is the playwright's propensity for putting highfalutin' words and phrasing in the mouths of characters who would never utter anything of the like.

The acting struck me as a mixed bag, with some miscasting.

The set was excellent.

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Whizzer, I got the impression that Ben died of AIDS from the blood transfusion from Scotty. When the line "don't get a blood transfusion in the 80s" was spoken, I thought it was being spoken in reference to Ben. It seemed to me to imply that Scotty had AIDS (obtaining it while he was on his trip) and that Ben needed blood from Scotty and contracted the disease. Hence the repeated "how are you" awkwardness.

That's what I assumed. Whether it was hetero or homo, I think he contracted it in Africa from someone. I also think this probably had something to do with the Alana breakup.

Tom, That's what I initially thought happened, but it all seemed glossed over fairly quickly. I mean, in a way why would they have a need to discuss any of this in any sort of detail 20 years after it happened? Even though Jeff spent 5 years in Chicago, he stayed close enough to the family that he would have known about what happened to Ben, IMO.

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I can't remember, does Morty accuse Ben of being with another woman or a man or is it left gender unspecific?

I saw the show again last night, and I thought it was very good. To me, it held up well even without the suspense element that is there the first time you see something. And since the earlier previews, they've altered the staging of the play's last few moments to more effectively connect them to the first few moments.


SPOILERS

Regarding a few of the points above --

1) Ben admits there was another "woman," and I didn't get the sense in anything that followed that his statement was inaccurate. (Although who knows what Mort's polaroids might actually have shown?)

2) The dress does still have pockets -- Hecht stuck her hands in them a couple of times. They aren't too noticeable otherwise.

3) In my view, it's definite that the blood transfusion is what killed Scotty, and that it didn't involve Ben.

To paraphrase and abbreviate, Judith Light's character says: "He was straight and didn't do drugs. When he returned from Africa, the [impliedly smug, overconfident] 'New York' doctors said they'd take care of him. Don't ever get a blood transfusion in 1981."

4) I found the exposition in Act II regarding characters' fates to be well-handled and to arise pretty naturally from the circumstances of the various conversations.

Just got back from today's matinee. Hecht and Light gave stellar performances, and I found Santo's set pleasant and workable if not truly award-worthy. Otherwise, i'm sorry to say there wasn't as much to chew on as I'd hoped based on the above posts.

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It seemed clear in my reading of the show that Scott was probably gay-- he stated emphatically that Liyana was in no way a serious girlfriend for him and was quite ready to palm her off on Jeff so he could head out on his own course. I still didn't buy Fay's words that he contracted HIV from a blood transfusion; I think this was just the tale she wanted to believe instead. Knowing the specifics of Scott's life in 1981 would have been a terrific emotional hook for the show had it been included.

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Frankly the fact that all the posters above needed to parse the dialogue between them just to figure out the true outcomes of so many characters suggests to me that the play didn't carry out the basic tenet of any good drama to let us know what happens. Any Lifetime movie of the week at least gives us that much. Greenberg created some terrific dialogue passages, and some particularly lovely monologues for Judith Light's character (her Act II speech is a home run.) But for me that wasn't nearly enough of a payoff to merit the slog through the dry spells throughout the 2 1/2 hours. Sorry, Jordan. Wanted to love it as much as you, but this time not so much.

*** MAJOR SPOILERS for J52's benefit***
Do NOT read if you're planning to see the show-- the speech Light gives regarding the ruby necklace is the absolute highpoint of the evening.

It's obvious to Fay that her mother Rivka's ruby necklace (brought with her from the shtetl) is paste. Despite this, Fay spends years longing to have her mother pass the necklace on to her, and then is distraught when Rivka gifts the necklace to Julie, Fay's glamorous famous sister-in-law whom Fay is expected to hate. We learned in Act I that Fay's husband Mort blackmailed Ben (Julie's husband and Fay's brother) to pretend that Rivka (now uncommunicative and near death) has a dying wish that the necklace be back in Fay's hands. Though borne of blackmail, the loving act of Julie passing the necklace back to Fay totally rewrites Fay's later years to love life again, and forge a lasting bond between Fay and Julie that gets them both through the loss of mates and family members.

The punchline for Fay is the necklace is in fact genuine, and selling the necklace buys Fay the means to support Julie in her lovely 14 room apartment in her later years. Those are the bare plot points-- thank God we had Richard Greenberg (and Judith Light) to turn this prose into poetry.

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Updated On: 3/31/13 at 10:39 PM