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.
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.
Caswell and all involved parties have created work of which they should be proud; it’s not often an audience is held in such puzzlement without resulting in exhaustion, animosity or, worse, derision. Scene Partners is far from perfect—if judged totally by its many aims, perhaps a failure—but creates in us what its title promises: a messy, vibrant thing against which we can toss back our own idiosyncrasies.
2023 | Off-Broadway |
Vineyard Theatre Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
Videos