Reviews

Women of a Certain Age

Richard Nelson’s final play in the ”Gabriels” trilogy is set on Election Day 2016.

Maryann Plunkett, Roberta Maxwell, Amy Warren, and Jay O. Sanders in Women of a Certain Age, Play Three of The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, written and directed by Richard Nelson at The Public Theater.
Maryann Plunkett, Roberta Maxwell, Amy Warren, and Jay O. Sanders in Women of a Certain Age, Play Three of The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family, written and directed by Richard Nelson at The Public Theater.
(© Joan Marcus)

The Gabriels of Rhinebeck, New York, got up early on Tuesday morning. Like 57 percent of the American population this year, they headed to their local polling place to cast their votes for the next president of the United States. Formerly upper middle class and now downwardly mobile to an uncomfortable degree, the Gabriels cast their ballots for Hillary Clinton and headed home. They had a family dinner to plan, a gathering in memory of Thomas Gabriel, who died just one day short of a year ago. Like the rest of the world, the Gabriels didn't know how the day would end.

Women of a Certain Age, the third and final drama in Richard Nelson's The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family trilogy at the Golden Performing Arts Center, is a strange play to experience in the wake of the 2016 presidential election. Set on Election Day, November 8, 2016 (opening night), the work follows the members of the Gabriels clan as they cook and mourn, discuss bygone days and plan for the future. They share their fears and sadness and hope between the hours of 5pm and 7pm, the returns sitting in the back of their brains and slowly moving to the forefront. It's just shortly before the United States changed in a way that columnists like David Brooks are now calling "the greatest political shock of our lifetimes."

When we last met the Gabriels in the cycle's second installment, What Did You Expect?, they had received some bad news about family matriarch Patricia (Roberta Maxwell). Now residing in an "independent living inn," Patricia had been conned into taking out a "reverse mortgage" on the family home, as well as a great many new and inessential loans. The result is that they've now lost the place where the deceased Thomas and his siblings, George (Jay O. Sanders) and Joyce (Amy Warren), were raised, and where Thomas' widow, Mary (Maryann Plunkett), currently resides with Thomas' first wife, Karin (Meg Gibson).

Women of a Certain Age picks up just shy of two months after that. Just as the world has shifted, so too have the lives of our protagonists. Mary is still grieving the loss of her husband, though Karin, who has been renting a room in the Gabriel home, is moving on. George's wife, Hannah (Lynn Hawley), has been forced to take on a side job as a maid at the nearby Rhinecliff Hotel. And Patricia has been felled by a stroke that left her paralyzed on one side, though still mentally sharp, at least when she's awake.

The Gabriels series isn't as overtly political as Nelson's last cycle, The Apple Family Plays; it's much more about how an ordinary family deals with grief and a feeling of being forgotten. Yet a play that deals with election results cannot help but resonate differently with audiences before votes are tallied and after. When one character asks another what would happen if Hillary Clinton didn't win, the answer likely provoked a hearty laugh before Tuesday. On Thursday, when I attended, this line was received solemnly. The blending of the play's world so intimately with our own makes for vitally naturalistic theater.

Naturalism has always been the specialty of Nelson's play cycles, which he directs with great subtlety on an airy kitchen set by Susan Hilferty and Jason Ardizzone-West. After all, these are plays where the actors actively chop vegetables and cook full meals. The events of this week, and the current discord in our country, have added to the humanity of the performances, which are filled with doubt and shock, but also a small amount of hope. It's a shame to say goodbye to characters who so expertly capture our anxieties, as well as to the magnificent actors who take on these roles with full devotion. But as the Gabriels gradually realize, the future by its nature is always unknown, and there's nothing to do but plunge into it.