‘SUMMER, 1976’: Jessica Hecht & Laura Linney. Photo: Jeremy Daniel.

SUMMER, 1976
Written by David Auburn
Directed by Daniel Sullivan
Through June 10, 2023
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
(212-239-6200), www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com

By David NouNou

Most New York theatregoers know that this is Tony crunch time and a plethora of shows open back-to-back in the last two weeks of April, jockeying for the best position for the prestigious and coveted awards. Some succeed in this maneuvering, but most of them fall by the wayside because they are all crashing into each other and ultimately face closure due to the glut in the market.

However, sometimes a beautiful gem manages to enter the fray, and this one is David Auburn’s Summer, 1976, an ode to women and friendship. You enter the theatre seeing an unassuming backyard. Two women walk in from opposite sides of the stage and sit across from each other. They are Diana (Laura Linney), the frosty, well-put-together, always neat woman, who has to have everything in its place; and Alice (Jessica Hecht), the more bohemian, disheveled, not-too-well-put together woman whose house is always a mess. Sort of like Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in Netflix’s Grace and Frankie might have been 30 years earlier, with one big difference: These women are real.

They start talking, breaking the fourth wall; they are talking to us and telling us how they met and had an instant dislike to each other. Their friendship resulted from each of them having a daughter and the two daughters bonded together, being inseparable and thus forcing the two women to warm up to each other and form a cordial friendship and opening up to us with their backstories; one sees the friendship and co-dependency growing and the events that took place that summer of 1976.

After being worn down from seeing my sixth consecutive show, I was amazed how I was being enveloped by this story. I was actually investing in these women and wanted to know more and more about them and what happens to them. Not that they were extraordinary wonder women; they were everyday women, who are moms, and some of them are wives; they are just navigating everyday life. What makes them so interesting is David Auburn’s brilliant, sensitive, and naturalistic writing. The humor comes from genuine feelings and conversation, not sitcom dialogue. There is honesty in the writing, and this filters out into the audience.

I have seen both Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht in about six different shows each, and I’ve admired their formidable talents. However, I have never seen them be so touching and vulnerable. They are both great technicians who deliver very good performances, but here I got to see two women and not actresses who let their guards down and see what a friendship and bond means to these two women. Their chemistry is theatrical magic.

Daniel Sullivan is a good director, but when given a great script, he outdoes himself. He has fine-tuned these two performances to shine brilliantly. Long after one leaves the theatre, as I am writing this review, I am still thinking about these two women and what became of them.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 30, 2023
Reviewed at April 29, 2023 press performance.

‘SUMMER, 1976’: Laura Linney & Jessica Hecht. Photo: Jeremey Daniel.

‘SUMMER, 1976’: Jessica Hecht & Laura Linney. Photo: Jeremy Daniel.

‘SUMMER, 1976’: Laura Linney & Jessica Hecht. Photo: Jeremy Daniel.

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‘MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON’: Laura Linney. Photo: Matthew Murphy

MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON
Written by Elizabeth Strout
Adapted by Rona Munro
Directed by Richard Eyre
Through February 29, 2020
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
212-239-6200
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

By David NouNou

Lucy Barton (Laura Linney) has a lot to say about her life from childhood to current day, but not in a very cohesive manner. She repeatedly claims “that everyone has one important story in them to tell,” and this is her story. This monologue is told in 90 minutes with no intermission. However, the show feels more like an outpouring of events and tales where a patient tells the psychiatrist their problems and in this case the audience is in the role of the psychiatrist.

As the show commences, Lucy is in a hospital room telling of her stay there years ago when she was admitted for an appendectomy and had to stay for nine weeks (no explanation is given for that length of time). Lucy grew up in rural heartland farm country in Amgash, Illinois with distant parents and an older brother and sister. They were abused and humiliated as children by their parents. She grew up being a smart child and came to New York on a scholarship and got married and has two daughters. While in the hospital, she was visited by her long-estranged mother (Ms. Linney, doubling up as her mother) traveling all alone from Amgash. Lucy, while in pain, wanted to hear the stories her mother used to tell about the eccentric people back in Amgash and the gossip her mother told about the people she knew when she was growing up.

We know that Lucy had a wonderful, kind Jewish doctor who got her through her illness. Her mother foretells that Lucy is going to have a troubled marriage later on, and leaves her again to go back home. No spoiler alert here, but Ms. Strout did write a few novels retelling her stories: that she went back to Amgash nine years later to comfort her mother before she died, went back a year later to visit her father before he died. As Lucy’s mother had foretold, Lucy ends up divorcing her husband because he had an affair with the babysitter who took care of their girls while she was in the hospital. Lucy witnessed the advent of AIDS and 9/11. Lucy wrote books and became successful, but her guilt never left her.

Whether the guilt of leaving her family, whether becoming a successful writer, whether divorcing her husband, whether her daughters resented her, Lucy observed a lot of pain around her, and has remorse about the decisions she made. She is a good woman with a lot of issues.

What anchors this stream of consciousness is the brilliant Laura Linney. Ms. Linney’s finest stage works have been done at the Manhattan Theatre Club with Sight Unseen; Time Stands Still, The Little Foxes and now My Name is Lucy Barton. She embodies every nuance of the narrative whether it is her depiction of her mother and their troubled relationship, or the gay friend/neighbor who died of AIDS, or her brother and sister’s resentment of her for leaving Illinois for a better life, or recalling her daughter yelling “Mommy!” when she saw the second plane crashing into the second tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, she imbues every moment with humanity and humility. Ms. Linney is at her touching best when she recalls an incident of someone yelling “Mommy;” was it her younger daughter yelling for her or was it she calling out for her own mother? Although there are many narrative gaps in My Name is Lucy Barton, Ms. Linney fills them with her passion and consistently engaging stage presence.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published January 20, 2020
Reviewed at January 18, 2020 press performance.

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‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Laura Linney & Darren Goldstein. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE LITTLE FOXES
Written by Lillian Hellman
Directed by Daniel Sullivan
Through July 2, 2017
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
(212-239-6200),www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com

By Scott Harrah

Greed is the primary deadly sin among the many that run rampant in Manhattan Theatre Club’s brilliant revival of Lillian Hellman’s most enduring play The Little Foxes. There is jasmine in the air, mint in the juleps and backstabbing at every turn in this tale of the Deep South. Cotton is king and the family plays each other as pawns to get the biggest share from the ill-gotten gains.

The Little Foxes is Ms. Hellman’s most accessible drama because it is so intricately constructed, timeless, and a classic. The show was first produced on Broadway in 1939 with Tallulah Bankhead, and has featured everyone from Elizabeth Taylor and Anne Bancroft to Stockard Channing over the years. This outstanding revival showcases Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon, alternating the roles of Regina Giddens and Birdie Hubbard with the “blue” cast (Ms. Linney as Regina) and “green” cast (Ms. Nixon as Regina). It’s a winning gimmick indeed (this review is of a performance with Ms. Linney as Regina and Ms. Nixon as Birdie), but the true beauty of the show is how Ms. Hellman’s story holds up nearly 80 years after it was first mounted. Greed and family dysfunction have not changed much since 1900 Alabama (when the play is set).

This Southern Gothic tale is set in a small Alabama town, centering on the struggle for controlling a family business. Regina Hubbard is a formidable villainess, a woman wanting to gain financial control of her life because her ailing husband Horace (Richard Thomas) is in a Baltimore hospital with a heart condition and she must rely on him for money. Meanwhile, her brothers Oscar (Darren Goldstein) and Ben (Michael McKean) live well off the inheritance from their father and his profitable plantation and cotton fields, with money made off the backs of low-paid African-American workers.

The brothers want to build a new cotton mill and they ask Regina for money (an additional $75,000), but she has to get the funds from her sick husband Horace. The three-act drama has a riveting narrative filled with family machinations as we see the lengths the family goes to due to their avarice, including suggesting a marriage between first cousins Leo (Michael Benz) and Alexandra (Francesca Carpanini).

Birdie Hubbard (a role alternated in this production by Ms. Linney and Ms. Nixon) is the alcoholic wife of Oscar. She’s a delicate flower indeed, physically abused by her husband, dependent on his wealth, with a penchant for elderberry wine and clinging to the fading gentility of the old South. In the “blue” cast, Ms. Nixon’s portrayal of Birdie is haunting and heartbreaking.

The show is flawlessly directed, designed and acted. Laura Linney as Regina is evil incarnate, and Cynthia as Birdie Huddard, Regina’s sister-in-law, is the charm that was the South. The production is ably supported by Michael McKean and Darren Goldstein as Regina’s conniving brothers. Richard Thomas as her husband Horace is simply wonderful. Caroline Stefanie Clay as maid Addie, and Francesca Carpanini, as Alexandra, are also noteworthy. This is a play that resonates today as it did in 1939 when it was first presented. The Little Foxes, directed by Daniel Sullivan, is one of the year’s best revivals.

Edited by David NouNou
Published April 24, 2017
Reviewed at press performance on April 23, 2017

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: (left to right) Francesca Carpanini as Alexandra & Laura Linney as Regina. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Laura Linney as Regina. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Cynthia Nixon as Birdie & Francesca Carpanini as Alexandra. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Darren Goldstein & Michael Benz. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Richard Thomas & Caroline Stephanie Clay. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Michael McKean. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’: Darren Goldstein. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘THE LITTLE FOXES’ (Green Company): Cynthia Nixon as Regina & Laura Linney as Birdie. The two actresses alternate the roles at certain performances. Photo: Joan Marcus

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