The Apple Family Plays: That Hopey Changey Thing and Sorry

Tony Award winner Richard Nelson’s widely celebrated series of four The Apple Family Plays explores politics, change, and family dynamics. Set on dates of historic significance between 2010 and 2013, the plays have been heralded by The New York Times as “a rare and radiant mirror on the way we live … no previous works of theater have been topical in the resonant and specific ways of The Apple Family Plays.” Now TimeLine brings two of these remarkable plays (the first and third from the series) to Chicago to be presented on alternating nights.

That Hopey Changey Thing is set as the polls close on the 2010 mid-term elections, and Sorry is set on the morning of the presidential election in 2012. Both explore how a family sorts through personal and political feelings of loss and confusion in the shadow of history as it is being made. “One of Mr. Nelson’s points with this series is how world events are refracted and reflected in our own living and dining rooms in ways we’re not always aware of” wrote The New York Times, and the New York Daily News raved that “the big picture illuminates and informs what’s happening close to home and vice versa.”