Winter, 1985. 75-year-old Meryl ditches ice-cold Milwaukee for sunny Los Angeles, hell-bent on becoming a movie star. She’s got big dreams, a little money, and a whole lot of nerve. But will the world ever know her for who she really is? Starring two-time Academy Award® winner Dianne Wiest as Meryl, and directed by Tony Award® -winning director Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812), John J. Caswell, Jr.’s (Wet Brain; Vineyard’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award) Scene Partners is a wildly theatrical, hilarious and genre-twisting gallop through the experience of a woman reborn.
This playwright is big on concept. Earlier this year, John J. Caswell Jr. gave us a play, “Wet Brain,” that took us inside the fevered mind of an alcoholic. In his new play, “Scene Partners,” a 75-year-old widow from the Midwest takes off for Hollywood to become a movie star even before her dead (and very hateful) husband has been buried. The big concept is her name, Meryl Kowalski.
The stagecraft features the work of video producer Anne Troup and projection designer David Bengali dominating more scenes than is usual for a show in a relatively small Off-Broadway house. But the solid production can’t completely compensate for the elusiveness of the script. The playwright of “Scene Partners” is withholding, making his scene partners – which is to say, the actors and the audience — do too much of the work.
2023 | Off-Broadway |
Vineyard Theatre Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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