Study Shows Stephen Karam's THE HUMANS Reflects Real-Life Phenomenon Among Middle-Aged White Americans

A funny thing happened on playwright Stephen Karam's way to Broadway with his triumphantly received comedy/drama THE HUMANS.

His play about an Irish-American family's collision of tragedies surfacing during a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner suddenly, according to a New York Times article, received an additional layer of relevance.

As described by Michael Schulman in The New Yorker, the "paper of record" reported last fall that "something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans."

It seems that two economists from Princeton, Angus Deaton and Anne Case, had found that the death rate of middle-aged white Americans, like the characters portrayed by Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell in Karam's play, was going up.

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The Broadway production of Stephen Karam's much-raved-about new play, The Humans, opened February 18, 2016. Directed by Tony Award winner Joe Mantello and featuring its entire acclaimed off-Broadway cast, The Humans plays performances at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre (240 West 44th Street).

The ensemble cast, all of whom were featured in the Off-Broadway production at Roundabout Theatre Company, includes Cassie Beck ( Aimee), Reed Birney (Erik), Jayne Houdyshell (Deirdre) Lauren Klein (Fiona "Momo" Blake), Arian Moayed (Richard) and Sarah Steele (Brigid).

Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake (Birney) has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter's apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside the ramshackle pre-war duplex, and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the Blake clan's deepest fears and greatest follies are laid bare. Our modern age of anxiety is keenly observed, with humor and compassion, in this new American classic.