Rodney’s Wife
Description
In 1962, on location in Rome, a fading movie star and his wife are entangled in an unraveling web of secrets, lies, and sexual impropriety that threatens to tear apart their family.
Production Info
Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
Press Quotes
“Irritation has never been given its full due as a dramatic emotion. You don’t see a mask of irascibility scowling between the masks of comedy and tragedy. But with the right play … sustained prickliness can be more affecting than a confrontational scram-off as you wait anxiously for friction to turn into fire. Eugene O’Neill’s LONG DAYS’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT is probably the ultimate example of this phenomenon. But more immediate proof of the same powerful law of theater is available at Richard Nelson’s RODNEY’S WIFE … Seeming light conversation scrapes the skins of the characters in this sharply etched study of dislocation, loneliness and sexual betrayal … And you are always aware of the strain and the snappishness that arise when people politely avoid saying what is on everyone’s mind. Long before the unspoken is brought out for airing, Mr Nelson … [has] created a full emotional geography of a family, with deserts and bogs and patches of quicksand. Over the last decade Mr Nelson, who has always had more of a following in London than in New York, has laid claim to being American drama’s foremost living portrayer of what movie advertisements used to refer grandly to as ‘illicit passion.’ Mr Nelson, however, follows paths of erotic misadventure never mapped in Peyton Place. He has at least flirted with several forms of incest and what would legally qualify as pedophilia in MADAME MELVILLE, FRANNY’S WAY and the fearless GOODNIGHT CHILDREN EVERYWHERE, which won him the Olivier Award in London for best play. RODNEY’S WIFE manages to come up with yet another variation on the sexually taboo … Yet like Mr Nelson’s earlier works, RODNEY’S WIFE is never tainted by prurience, on the one hand, or puritanical head-shaking, on the other. What Mr Nelson offers instead is a deep and sorrowful understanding of how much loneliness there often is in lust. At the same time he has created what may be the most incisive, unsensationalized portrait of a Hollywood wife ever to grace a stage.” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times
Author
Richard NelsonRichard Nelson's plays include the four-play series, THE APPLE FAMILY (THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING, SWEET AND SAD, SORRY, REGULAR SINGING (Nominated for Outstanding Play in Drama Desk Awards 2014; Public Theater, 2010 – 2013), NIKOLAI AND THE OTHERS (Lincoln Center Theater, 2013), FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE (Hampstead Theatre, 2012), HOW SHAKESPEARE WON THE WEST, (Huntington Theater, 2008), CONVERSATIONS AT TUSCULUM (Public Theater, 2008), FRANK'S HOME (Goodman Chicago, Playwrights Horizons, 2007), RODNEY'S WIFE (Playwrights Horizons, 2004), WHERE I COME FROM (National Theatre Connections), MADAME MELVILLE (which ran in the West End starring Macaulay Culkin and Irene Jacob and opened in May 2001 Off-Broadway); GOODNIGHT CHILDREN EVERYWHERE (winner of Olivier Award for Best New Play, 2000), KENNETH'S FIRST PLAY (with Colin Chambers, RSC), THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA (at the RSC and the Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York), NEW ENGLAND (RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), MISHA'S PARTY (with Alexander Gelman, RSC and Williamstown Theater Festival), TWO SHAKESPEAREAN ACTORS (Tony nomination for Best Play, RSC and Broadway), COLUMBUS AND THE DISCOVERY OF JAPAN (RSC Barbican), SOME AMERICANS ABROAD (Olivier nomination, Best Comedy; RSC, Lincoln Center and Broadway), LEFT, BETWEEN EAST AND WEST (Hampstead), PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORAE (winner of Time Out Award, RSC and Manhattan Theater Club), THE RETURN OF PINOCCHIO, AN AMERICAN COMEDY, BAL, CONJURING AN EVENT, RIP VAN WINKLE, JUNGLE COUP, THE KILLING OF YABLONSKI, THE VIENNA NOTES (Obie Award). His musicals include JAMES JOYCE'S THE DEAD (starring Christopher Walken and Blair Brown; Playwrights Horizons, Belasco Theatre, Broadway, Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, Kennedy Center, Washington; for which he received a Tony Award in 2000 for Best Musical Book), CHESS (the book for the Broadway musical), PARADISE FOUND (dir: Harold Prince and Susan Strohman), MY LIFE WITH ALBERTINE (with Ricky Ian Gordon; Playwrights Horizons), UNFINISHED PIECE FOR A PLAYER PIANO (with Peter Golub). His translations and adaptations include TYNAN starring Corin Redgrave (with Colin Chambers, RSC and West End), LOLITA with Brian Cox (National), Molnar's THE GUARDSMAN (Kennedy Center), Carriere's THE CONTROVERSY (Public Theater), Fo's ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST (Broadway), Strindberg's THE FATHER with Frank Langella (Broadway) and MISS JULIE (Yale Rep), Beaumarchais' THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (the Guthrie and Broadway); Molière's DON JUAN, Ibsen's WILD DUCK and ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, Pirandello's ENRICO IV, Goldoni's IL CAMPIELLO, Erdmann's THE SUICIDE. With the esteemed translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, he was co-translated Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD, Gogol's THE INSPECTOR, Turgenev's A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY and Bulgakov's DON QUIXOTE. Films: Hyde Park on Hudson, staring Bill Murray and Laura Linney (Dir: Roger Michell), Ethan Frome, starring Liam Neeson (Dir: John Madden); Sensibility and Sense, staring Elaine Stritch and Jean Simmons (Dir: David Jones). Television: The End of a Sentence with Edward Herrmann (Dir: David Jones). Radio Plays include: HYDE PARK ON HUDSON, LANGUAGES SPOKEN HERE (Giles Cooper Award), EATING WORDS (Giles Cooper Award), ADVICE TO EASTERN EUROPE, AN AMERICAN WIFE (all BBC).
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 11/1/2005 |
| Pages | 80 |
| ISBN | 9780881452853 |
Special Notes
Originally produced by Williamstown Theater Festival and then in New York by Playwrights Horizons
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypublishing.com
