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This intimate and landmark series follows the Gabriel family of Rhinebeck, New York, through the momentous and divisive 2016 election year. While preparing meals in their kitchen, together they grapple in real time with issues of money, history, art, politics and family, as well as the fear of having been left behind.
What Did You Expect? — “The second work in the second cycle of plays by Mr. Nelson that have quietly emerged as a sui generis triumph of civic theater… It is a testament to Mr. Nelson’s well-honed craft, and that of his cast, that these topics are seldom addressed directly yet are embedded in the play’s every fragment. His family cycles inhabit the here and now with an unobtrusive thoroughness I’ve never encountered elsewhere in the theater.”
Women of a Certain Age — “The Gabriels, the tenderly wrought creations of the playwright Richard Nelson, along with Mr. Nelson’s earlier tetralogy, The Apple Family Plays, may collectively represent the most profound achievement in topical theater in this country since the Depression-era triumphs of Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty and Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock. The talk in Women never strays far from the safe foot path of casual conversation. But Mr. Nelson knows that in certain contexts, no conversation is casual…before you know it, this modest play has indirectly addressed matters both of the utmost immediate relevance, and of cosmic implications.”
Richard Nelson’s many plays include Illyria; The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family (Hungry, What Did You Expect?, and Women of a Certain Age); The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country (That Hopey Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad, and Sorry, Regular Singing); Nikolai and the Others; Goodnight Children Everywhere (Olivier Award for Best Play); Franny’s Way; Some Americans Abroad; Frank’s Home; Two Shakespearean Actors; and James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey; Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical). He has also written for film, namely the screenplays for Hyde Park-on-Hudson and Ethan Frome. He is the recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.