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A double volume that features the final installments from Tony Award-winning playwright and director Richard Nelson’s critically acclaimed Rhinebeck Panorama.
Begun over twelve years ago, each play in Nelson’s intricate and moving play cycle captures a snapshot in the lives of three families from a small upstate New York village: the Apple family, the Gabriels, and now the Michaels—a family with deep roots in the world of modern dance.
The first play in this collection, The Michaels: Conversations During Difficult Times, takes place in the kitchen of Rose Michael, a celebrated choreographer. A meal is prepared, modern dances are rehearsed, and dinner is eaten—all amidst conversations about art, death, family, politics, and the state of America.
What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad brings the cycle to a close as the Michaels find themselves in Angers, France, in September 2021. They are attending a student dance festival and crawling out from under a deadly pandemic, which turned life as they knew it upside down.
Truly moving…The Michaels is as hopeful as it is heartbreaking.
—The New York Times on The Michaels
A beautifully written, finely directed piece of theater…you will leave feeling marvelously full.
—The Daily Beast on The Michaels
[A] spare, deceptively simple but ultimately heart-wrenching play.
—The Hollywood Reporter on The Michaels
These extraordinary plays have left us scrambling with each new visit to recall how things stood 'when last we left them,' and wondering what will happen next.
—The New York Times on What Happened?
Without pedantry or pretense, What Happened? shines a fierce light on COVID’s devastating impact not just on artists, but on the vast majority of individuals who, whatever their backgrounds, were not thriving to begin with under the grossly deformed model of capitalism that has overtaken the American economy.
—New York Stage Review on What Happened?
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.