When we last caught up with the Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York — the fictional clan of erudite schoolteachers and artists and lawyers first imagined by Richard Nelson more than a decade ago — we were in the early months of the COVID pandemic and the playwright/director’s troupe of veteran players were holed up in separate Zoom windows for a trilogy of 2020 quarantine plays that began with What Do We Need to Talk About?
The eighth play in the Apple saga, We’ll See, returns to the live Public Theater stage as well as the premise of the first: That Hopey Changey Thing was set on the night of the 2010 midterm elections and revolved around a clan of longstanding Democrats grappling with the political mood of the country two years into the presidency of Barack Obama, when the lofty promise of sweeping progressive transformation had collided with the institutional intransigence of 21st-century American democracy.
When the four Apple siblings gather around the kitchen now shared by schoolteacher sisters Barbara (the magnificent Maryann Plunkett) and Marian (Laila Robins, engagingly reserved), there’s talk of both the hopeful outcome for Democrats seeking to regain control of Congress as well as the anguish borne by a second Trump administration. The family, which also includes Brooklyn-based writer Jane (Sally Murphy, radiating baby-sister energy), retired lawyer Richard (Jay O. Sanders, a natural raconteur), and Richard’s cancer-battling actress girlfriend Yvonne (Yvonne Woods, tremulously soulful), have imposed a moratorium on naming the Voldemort in the White House. “Every time I hear his slimy voice I want to throw up,” Barbara declares.
Instead, we get references to disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (whom Richard dismisses for his “dead eyes”), rapacious former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (who really did buy the airport in Ulster County’s Kingston), as well as a wide array of writers and artists (from Walt Whitman to George Eliot) who feed the daily thoughts and conversations of this well-read family. We also get stories, many stories, reflecting the changing times and how all politics really is local. The Rhinebeck immigrant workers who seek indoor work to avoid getting caught up in ICE sweeps. The visiting Ukrainian actress who was berated by a Russian speaker in a Manhattan drug store. The classroom incident with an outraged student that prompted Barbara to abruptly retire from her longtime job teaching English at the nearby high school.
As in the earlier plays in this cycle, there’s not much in the way of plot. This is more like a catch-up session with old friends who happen to spend their time acquiring esoteric scraps of knowledge they are eager to share; some of it is fascinating, while other tales could use tightening (or excision). But Nelson, who also directs, has a knack for capturing the ebb and flow of conversation among relatives, the way they tease and interrupt and overlap each other’s speech. It helps that the superlative cast has played these characters for years; there’s a natural lived-in quality to the performances that’s enhanced by Lawrence E. Moten III’s simple set, Amith Chandrashaker’s lighting, and Sarita P. Fellows’ costumes. Just as you find your attention drifting, the tone will shift as someone goes off on a fascinating new tangent.
Nelson’s recent plays seem to mirror the concerns of the lefty regulars who attend the Public Theater, of good people trying to make sense of a country that often seems to have abandoned its virtuous ideals for coarser, crueler discourse. We can identify with the concerns of Richard’s grown daughter, whom he says spends her days “trying to resist the total collapse of hope.” How far we’ve come from Obama’s audacity of hope. What Nelson’s little bubble of a play proves is that the mere act of coming together, in a theater or over a dining room table, may be the best defense against despair. ★★★★☆
WE’LL SEE
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 29 for $99