The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country

Press Quotes

THAT HOPEY CHANGEY THING

“Brilliant.” —The New Yorker

“About the loss of memory, family devotion and having an individual voice.” —Associated Press

“A neo-Chekhovian serious comedy, with conflicting viewpoints eloquently yet understatedly represented … It deals provocatively and entertainingly with political realities.” —John Simon, Bloomberg.com

“Ms Palin did, of course, coin the cutesy phrase that gives the play its title. But far from being a four-square assault on the conservative upswing that has fed Ms Palin’s popularity, Mr Nelson’s play is a quiet … examination of the state of the liberal-leaning mind of the current moment, two years into a Democratic presidency …” —New York Times

SWEET AND SAD

“If you see (and you need to) [Richard Nelson’s] soul-stirring new play, SWEET AND SAD, the odds are that you you’ll experience the kind of shivery moments that come when someone articulates ideas that have been lurking in your head, unexpressed and perhaps even unrecognized … Without ever steeping onto a soapbox, SWEET AND SAD ultimately dares to ask questions about our responses to September 11, that we might be afraid to tackle ourselves, even among friends, such as the relative definitions of victim and hero. At the same time Mr Nelson is asking us to consider what role art — and particularly theater — plays in how we assimilate the fears of loss that are always, on some level with us.” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“As someone who mostly avoided the memorializing and marmoreal-izing of 9/11, I can think of no better tribute to the dead than this show, with its itchy frustrations with humanity, its deep sympathy for the same, and its absolute refusal to let itself, or us, off easy.” —Scott Brown, New York Magazine

SORRY

“SORRY is about as big and as small a family drama as there is in American literature these days. It deals in the quotidian and the trivial, but it keeps us aware of how every seemingly insignificant detail in one family’s life is infused and informed by a much bigger picture … [A] beautiful, deeply cathartic play.” —Ben Brantley, The New York Times

“I’ve been trying to find words to describe what it felt like to be inside [the Public Theater] as the election raged noisily outside, what it’s like listening to the Apples speak to each other in inside-voices. It was a lovely, near-religious feeling of shared citizenship, one of the things theater was invented to foster.” —Scott Brown, New York Magazine

“One of the marvels of the Apple plays, each set at a pressing national moment, is how the family marks the huge event as they grapple and go on with their own urgent matters. The big picture illuminates and informs what’s happening close to home and vice versa. SORRY is the richest installment so far in the series, and that’s saying something after the wonderful SWEET AND SAD. SORRY is smart, funny and unapologetically heartbreaking.” —Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News

“SORRY is Nelson’s almost unbearably poignant reflection on the inseparably intertwined states of a family’s and a nation’s existential misgivings.” —Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg News

REGULAR SINGING

“To my knowledge, no previous works of theater have been topical in the resonant and specific ways as the Apple Family plays. REGULAR SINGING, the fourth and final installment of Richard Nelson’s wonderful, sui generis Apple Family plays, this deeply intimate drama is about how we remember our living and our dead … A rare and radiant mirror of the way we live — and fail to live — now.” —Ben Brantley, New York Times

“After a holiday weekend, it is natural to miss the family. But the family I’m missing now is named Apple and lives up the Hudson in Rhinebeck. These are the six people with whom I spent intimate, deeply moving and satisfying evenings. THE APPLE FAMILY: SCENES FROM LIFE IN THE COUNTRY [is] an extraordinary four-play cycle … one of the major American plays of our time.” —Linda Winer, Newsday

“Smart and funny, moving and touching, honest and thoughtful … The fantastic fourth and final installment in Mr Nelson’s Apple Family plays.” —Jesse Oxfeld, New York Observer

“An extraordinary achievement … A quietly devastating look at final things, and the last word in the unmatched power of stage naturalism.” —Jesse Green, New York Magazine

“… bids farewell to the clan we have come to know with almost unbearable intimacy throughout four plays … These plays approach the question of how we live now with an immediate, nearly pointillist specificity.” —Alexis Soloski, The Village Voice

“This intensely naturalistic drama consists of hushed, emotionally resonant conversations about matter personal and political, amid laughter, tears, food and drink … [These plays] are civilized ways for an audience (leaning in, listening close) to form a temporary clan with some lovingly rendered fictional creations. It’s good to be home.” —David Cote, Time Out New York

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