The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family

Press Quotes

HUNGRY

“Wonderful … HUNGRY, a work in which nothing much happens beyond some contemplative pre-dinner chatter, may well be the most resonantly topical and emotionally engaging play of this election year.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

“[HUNGRY’s] thousand acts of extreme daily realism, from chopping vegetables to the constant dance of interpersonal negotiation, amount to a kind of human politics, dramatizing, as many more ‘dramatic’ plays cannot, the historic conflict and consolations of living in our country right now.” —Jesse Green, New York Magazine

“[Nelson] may just be quietly building a masterwork.” —Linda Winer, Newsday

“if you want to understand the forces driving the current presidential election, pay close attention to this play.” —The Daily Beast

“Richard Nelson’s quietly incandescent play HUNGRY, a play that feels as fresh as if it was written this morning …” —Jeremy Gerard, Deadline/Hollywood

“… delivers the sort of intimacy rarely encountered on the stage.” —Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

“… with a wordsmith’s scalpel, [Nelson] performs delicate surgery on the American psyche to probe what ails it. In exquisite character portrayals by Nelson’s six actors, we learn that the political season coincides with the ageless experience of loss — the death of Thomas, Hannah’s subtle casualisation from caterer to maid, Karin’s envy of a decent, dogged family, and the perennial mysteries of old age into which Patricia is disappearing. The crafted naturalism of each family member arriving to clutter the kitchen with books and ingredients, stir the (actually) cooking pot and set the table eases the audience into a realm of domestic intimacy. Against all theatrical rules, there’s almost no dramatic action, but as the gentle conversations unfold around the table, you feel the urge to lean in and listen intently. And you are rewarded.” —Victoria Laurie, The Australian

“Unique chance to be a fly on the Gabriels’ kitchen wall is not to be missed … What is perhaps surprising about these plays at first sight is how little the family discuss politics as such. For the Gabriels, it’s the little rituals of family life that matter, exemplified by how they set the kitchen at the start of each play. It is the issues that matter to ordinary people that Nelson wants to explore. How do we pay for health care? With rich ‘out-of-towners’ buying up our properties, why can’t we afford to live in our own communities any more? When did the banks stop paying interest to savers? The communal activity of cooking a meal is the enabler, a special ‘family’ time at which such matters can naturally come to the fore at an unforced pace. It’s all real — you can smell the onions frying — and put across with a particularly magical naturalism inhabiting every line, gesture and chopped pimento … Much of the writing is heart-warmingly gentle and brilliantly observed. There’s plenty of humour … The Gabriels will stay with you long after you leave the theatre.” —Clive Paget, Limelight Magazine (Australia)

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

“A mirror of our frightened, fallible selves at this very fraught moment in American history … WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? is the second work in the second cycle of plays by Mr Nelson that have quietly emerged as a sui generis triumph of civic theater … [They] inhabit the here and now with an unobtrusive thoroughness I’ve never encountered elsewhere in the theater.” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“By exploring the underwater part of the iceberg whose visible tip is politics, [Nelson] is challenging the idea of what political theater can be.” —Jesse Green, New York Magazine

“As close to a perfect illusion as theatre can get …” —Max McGuinness, Financial Times

“The quiet brilliance of Nelson’s extraordinary project …” —Linda Winer, Newsday

“The effect is akin to eavesdropping on a private family conversation.” —Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter

WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE

“[The Gabriels] … may collectively represent the most profound achievement in topical theater in this country since the Depression-era triumphs of Clifford Odets’ WAITING FOR LEFTY and Marc Blitzstein’s THE CRADLE WILL ROCK. Not that Mr. Nelson’s cycle of works is anything like those ardently partisan predecessors … What Mr. Nelson … does is quieter and, ultimately sadder and more resonant. He asks us to sit down in real time, in the kitchen of a close family for a casual meal. And as we listen to its members talk, even on trivial subjects like the decoration of cookies, we feel the far-reaching tremors of a scared country that has come down with a rattling case of identity crisis …” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“Nelson’s work seems more vital than ever.” —Max McGuinness, The Financial Times

“One of the exquisite rewards of WOMEN OF A CERTAIN AGE, and there are countless, is that while the play takes place on Election Night 2016 when it premiered … it provides a reprieve from the muck of politics. It’s a kind of healing balm, if you will, from the toxicity of a U.S. presidential race that was nastier and more divisive than any in memory.” —David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“It’s Nelson’s greatest strength as playwright and director here that he relegates politics mostly to the background; it’s oddly secondary (it wouldn’t be for anyone else) that this is at once the most and least momentous installment in the series — and perhaps Nelson’s canon — with nothing and everything happening simultaneously, and at a dizzying pace.” —Matthew Murray, Talkin’ Broadway

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