Theater: The Public Theater / 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY, 10003
Synopsis:
Last season in That Hopey Changey Thing, Richard Nelson (Conversations in Tusculum, James Joyce's The Dead) introduced Public LAB audiences to the liberal Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York, as they gathered for dinner on Election Night, 2010. Now, in Sweet and Sad, Nelson continues the story of the Apples over Sunday lunch on September 11, 2011. His second in a series of plays about the immediate present and the ever-changing state of the nation, Sweet and Sad explores what the Apple family has lost since the attacks, and what they remember.
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September 21, 2011: Whether plain or fancy, all words are destined to fail on occasion. That’s why so many of us freeze up when we try to write a condolence letter to someone who has just lost a partner or family member.
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September 11, 2011: There's nothing like a family meal to keep people from talking about what's really on their minds. Between setting the table and clearing the table (which is essentially the time span of the play), there are dozens of opportunities to keep the Apples from having open, honest discussions.
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September 22, 2011: A drama set on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 that opens on Sept. 11, 2011 — sounds gimmicky, yes? But the set-up for "Sweet and Sad" is one that playwright Richard Nelson has used before — "That Hopey Changey Thing" took place on election night, 2010 and opened that November — and one he plans to use again.
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September 14, 2011: The notion of starting again reverberates through Richard Nelson's "Sweet and Sad," at the Public Theater, an alternately sharp and tender meditation on loss, memory and life in a wounded post-9/11 world.
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September 16, 2011: The Apples don't fall far from the tree in Richard Nelson’s second play about his chatty New York clan, who convene upstate in Rhinebeck to eat, share personal news and shake their heads over the national mood. In last year’s "That Hopey Changey Thing", they dined and grew fractious over midterm elections, increasing despair over Obama’s inability to get anything done and the frightful drumbeat of Tea Partiers on the march. This time, as they gather on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the mood is more hushed and reverent, but fearful anger pulses beneath the funereal decorum.
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