Auditions drew a talented cast of newcomers and alumni. But I don't know if I really have the temperament for it. ALTSCHUL: And you were caring for her, in some ways, during that time? Sign In. ALTSCHUL: So the constraints of the facts kind of give you freedom to explore the little details? But my other play, "The Waverly Gallery," had this great director, Lila Neugebauer. The Waverly Gallery opened October 25, 2018, at the John Golden Theatre. They're just all talking. She is one of five stellar cast members, notably Lucas . Robert Massimi. It percolates somehow. A little seed in your brain somewhere, and you just let go. He loves it. The details are all very much drawn from my experience and from my family. So I was there for her last two years. And Matt was gonna direct it and he was also gonna be in it. ", Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck in Kenneth Lonergan's drama, "Manchester by the Sea.". And she was very much towards what was towards the behavior, and not so much the words. You do something, and somebody acknowledges a job well done, it gives you that extra little something. LONERGAN: They're very far along in that process. My mind was kinda wandering. And you kinda wanna say, "Where are you?" (LAUGHS) So then it's very simple to understand that you shouldn't talk! And especially as you're becoming an adult, and becoming not just a function of your family and your parents, to be facing the complexity of the rest of the world, and the fact that other people are just as important as you are at that moment when your own ego is identifying itself, is a very tricky moment in life. Find The Waverly Gallery stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. (LAUGHTER) But it's nice to have someone who's supportive, but very, very truthful with you. Our Pet Policy. ALTSCHUL: Once you've written something and put it down on paper, does it then inhabit a separate space from your memory? I grew up pretty easy circumstances. I'm gonna put this on paper and then I can grapple with it better"? Mr. Lonergan has one of the keenest ears of any working playwright. is also often deeply funny. What was it that resonated with people in that? "The Waverly Gallery" is narrated by Gladys's grandson, Daniel, the Lonergan stand-in, who has a penchant for wry, detached sarcasm. Let's start with my childhood: I had a happy childhood thanks to my parents. LONERGAN: Not really. Lots of talking. And then I was unable to write it for eight months. And all the characters are very closely modeled on my family. I mean, nobody knows why anybody's good at anything. And it's really hard to learn that, because you're, like, full of ideas of your own. ALTSCHUL: So if you were to do something differently, you might have said, "Okay, guys." It's about a teenage girl who's facing what the real world is like for the first time. I'm sure she'd get kick outta that. ALTSCHUL: What was your experience with that process? For whatever reason that passage wasn't actable. As the play continues, he's filled with guilt and remorse. And then they bought the script outright, which is unusual. ALTSCHUL: And at its core, what is it about? ALTSCHUL: And you take that idea that was just a little nugget of a brother-sister, different worlds, different perspectives on meaning. He was included in a later production at the Pasadena Playhouse in 2002. Gladys is . 'The Waverly Gallery' is about the final years of a generous, chatty, and feisty grandmother's final battle against Alzheimer's disease. Of course, Lonergan is talented, too. He's very smart. And she belongs in this world, even though she's nothing like my grandmother and the character is her invention, really. LONERGAN: You know, you can turn the lights on and off, (LAUGHTER) if someone walks in or out. And she just had a very profound understanding of I hate to call it this how the creative process works. I have a film I'm trying to write. Just a lot of borrowing and drawing on from all sorts of places. It was called "The Wonderful World of Pluto." She really liked to talk to people and she really liked to talk. LONERGAN: Well, it's always hard to say, but I think it's not a punishing movie. Matthew's mom was an acting coach, and one of the things she would help me with when I was writing plays was to say, "Listen, no one can act this. And everyone else in it is just as interested in their life as she is in her own. The characters dont grow or change, they just hang around. Or is it still all blended together? But I hadn't had a lot of bad life experience. Comedy icon Elaine May returns to Broadway after more than half a century, starring with Lucas Hedges, Joan Allen and Michael Cera in 'The Waverly Gallery,' Kenneth Lonergan's memory play inspired by his grandmother. And I don't know that I feel peeved or pleased when sometimes people say, "There's no stories in my plays," 'cause I try very hard to give you can't function without a structure. The pictures are good. ALTSCHUL: They're psychotherapists or psychiatrists? That its Elaine May who is giving life to Gladyss war against time lends an extra power and poignancy to The Waverly Gallery, which opened on Thursday night under Lila Neugebauers fine-tuned direction. Daniel's crystalline monologues of recollection aside, "The Waverly Gallery" often has the ostensible waywardness of recorded conversations. And this was a big deal for me. And it changes into something bigger now. Three officers shot, standoff follows in Kansas City, Mo., police say, Vanessa Bryant, family settles claims over Kobe crash site photos for $28.5M. "Doubt" by John Patrick Shanley. Blame the Federal Reserve. 'Cause he's always working. We'll just set them up in this . And the play, heavily based on Lonergans own grandmother, is a lovely and faltering and probably ultimately inadequate way to make up for that. I loved that man, I would have done anything for him. Gladys declines from scene to scene, a decline that the gallerys closing quickens. This was all before I was born, so I don't know all the details. There's a plot of some kind. It tries to be a human story about people going through something very difficult and doing their best. And I got to know her tastes a little bit, and I got to understand where they diverged from mine. Or if you combined people, it's very easy to pull details. he Waverly Gallery, now revived on Broadway, is an early play by. Who kinda guided you there? You don't really choose. In Mays extraordinary performance, Gladyss deterioration feels absolutely and terrifyingly real, fully embodied rather than merely acted. And funny, yreah. (LAUGHTER) Or at least step back a little bit. Its not so much a portrait as a miniature and there are moments when it doesnt seem to quite fill the theater or earn its two-hours traffic. LONERGAN: It is difficult. And it's unfortunate, 'cause people kind of hasten an end that's inevitable and doesn't have to be quite as separate. And I was able to write plays and do what I wanted for three years. If I could say in a sentence, I wouldn't be taking up three hours of anyone's time. ALTSCHUL: So, you would have to say, "Mom, things have progressed here. But even those depend somewhat on their verisimilitude to be compelling. Kenneth Lonergans wonderful play The Waverly Gallery, partnership with Mike Nichols is still considered the gold standard, their appearance on Broadway together in the early 1960s, An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May,, It will be one of the hottest tickets in town, First staged Off Broadway in 2000, with a very fine Eileen Heckart as Gladys, , Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter. In any case, the Gladys we meet in The Waverly Gallery the title comes from the small rented Greenwich Village space where she shows art of dubious distinction is conducting what might be called extreme improvisation. He's very undogmatic. It can be really fun. ALTSCHUL: Let's talk about "You Can Count On Me" and how that story developed. We need help now"? Everything you write is culled from your own experience or the experience of people you meet or see in other films or plays, and it's translated. So, I had this idea about a brother and a sister, just started to think what it means to me. [1][2] The play originally premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, running from August 11, 1999 to August 22, 1999. LONERGAN: I thought it would be funny if he took him on and all sorts of terrible things happened afterwards! And if something's happened to her you don't know, I'm totally screwed. LONERGAN: [As Matthew Broderick put it], it's my most literally autobiographical work. So I got to move in. I would have brought it back earlier, if the circumstances had lined up. I don't know why. So there's a theatrical version and the extended edition. LONERGAN: No, no! And then as it turned out, he wasn't able to be in it either because of his schedule. Select from premium The Waverly Gallery of the highest quality. A powerfully poignant and often hilarious play, The Waverly Gallery is about the final years of a generous, chatty, and feisty grandmother's final battle against Alzheimer's disease. She ends most of her sentences with a practiced winning smile that now seems to be searching anxiously for affirmation. But I also worked with some wonderful directors. LONERGAN: No, no. Shes bluffing, fabricating, groping for a direction in what must often seem like a void. LONERGAN: Yeah, and it's not your movie. And there's an opposite falseness on the other end of the scale to when things are just too heavy, too miserable, too relentless, too bleak. ALTSCHUL: Is it your most autobiographical work? It is a lifeli A work of at least partial autobiography, this is a memory play about memory loss. The Waverly - Hotel & Residences Whitefield Main Road, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560048 +91 80 6708 9000 | Hotel Phone Number +91 91 0848 1282 reservations@thewaverly.in account@thewaverly.in The Waverly Story The Waverly Hotel & Residences draws its inspiration from the rich heritage of Whitefield. I hope the plays are good and good enough to live beyond the first couple years when they appeared. LONERGAN: Yeah. But that doesnt stop Gladys talking, even in her sleep. Gladys crams all silences with increasingly disconnected bits of autobiography and with peppy questions and catchphrases that she has probably used for decades. LONERGAN: Yeah. LONERGAN: Just a little, well, a lot of the material. She was my first choice. How did you say yes? Tuesday was a tough day for "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie, who tested positive for COVID-19 for the third time in a little over a year. LONERGAN: Yeah. And I had friends who were making good money writing screenplays, and they kept urging me to do the same. And the moments where there's, you know, laughter or that easiness or understanding. ALTSCHUL: Do you feel that way about screenplays now? LONERGAN: They're psychoanalysts. She was kind of a soft communist, I like to describe her. LONERGAN:I don't know that, nobody does that anymore. I was young. ALTSCHUL: So you take the script and there are specific characters that he gives you an assignment? And real life is richer usually than your imagination. The Waverly Gallery is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. Wisdom? LONERGAN: She's a brilliant woman. I'm sure you heard about Jesus. And just to hasten the inevitable by kind of taking people away from their homes and away from their lives because they become an inconvenience, is really not great. They include Gladyss daughter (and Daniels mother), Ellen (Joan Allen, who wrenchingly combines filial devotion and resentment); her psychoanalyst husband Howard (an impeccably tactless David Cromer); and Don (Michael Cera, doing confident but clueless), a young painter from Massachusetts who stumbles into Gladyss gallery one day and winds up showing and living there. In what is a chock full of Theater, "The Waverly Gallery" is another great one. Part of the painful pleasure of The Waverly Gallery is listening to how these characters listen to Gladys, and how, in responding to her, they come to question the reliability of their own words. Director Lila Neugebauer allows the space for each actor in the brilliant cast to discover the core of their emotional journey. I'm movin' in"? And that's the other thing that I'm interested in, anyway, is that a lot of these big situations come down to practicalities, like who can be there at 5:00? Since Donald went on the altar boysThere was alcohol on his breath.". IBDB . ALTSCHUL: So, "Waverly Gallery," "This Is Our Youth," pieces of yours that just stand the test of time. And I think keeping all those balls in the air keeps it from being a depressing experience. ALTSCHUL: Was that story drawn from something in your life? The Waverly Gallery's opening monologue is so authentic, it's as if writer Kenneth Lonergan recorded the frenetic ramblings of a person slowly losing her memory for later use in his play about . And that's something interesting, there's a natural dramatic content in there. The Waverly Gallery By Kenneth Lonergan Directed by Lila Neugebauer Broadway: Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th Street, New York, NY December 14, 2018 Reviewed by Scott Klavan Elaine May in The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan, directed by Lila Neugebauer. Al Roker Has An Understandable Reaction To Savannah Guthrie's Positive COVID Test. May plays Gladys Green, a women who when we first meet her has the beginning of dementia. The Waverly Gallery Oct 25, 2018 Jan 27, 2019 . Like a spy novel. We performed it. And their loneliness, their isolation, their confusion, their anxiety, real and unreal. It was about 12 pages long. ALTSCHUL: It was 20 years ago that you were writing "The Waverly Gallery." And yet, while Lonergan mines his subject with delicacy and wit, he runs out of dramatic ore well before the evening's end. But this is a tragedy, even if it is a minor one, and its a tragedy familiar to anyone who has seen dementia up close. Playwright Kenneth Lonergan is so obsessed with telling Gladys' story and creating her . There's both a lot and very little happening in Kenneth Lonergan's The Waverly Gallery. And she also had a profound understanding of how elusive it can be. Such objections dissolve as soon as Gladys and her clan reassemble into groupings that convey both claustrophobic intimacy and tragic, unbridgeable distance. LONERGAN: It's a long story. ALTSCHUL: Oh my gosh. T he Waverly Gallery, now revived on Broadway, is an early play by Kenneth Lonergan and as directed by Lila Neugebauer and upraised by Elaine May's toweringly fragile performance, it is as. With its narrator Daniel (an always nuanced David Gow) recounting a familial past, The Waverly Gallery would seem to belong to the tradition sparked by Tennessee Williams with The Glass Menagerie. Click here to download the monologue. ALTSCHUL: You're so well known for your natural dialogue between characters, it almost feels as though we're eavesdropping on a conversation. I got a lotta money for it. She becomes more fearful and more delusional, shedding memories and words, burdening her daughter and grandson who love her, but dont know how to help her. Gladys Green owns a small art gallery in Greenwich Village. And really the bonds are very strong. She just was very thoughtful and also very, very insightful. LONERGAN: It's a little hard to say what it's about. And then what happens? As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. ALTSCHUL: And just walk in the other direction--. But yeah, I don't think he has any full-time analytic patients anymore. And it's something that some people never come to terms with. And then I thought, "Well, this is great. LONERGAN: I'm sure she'd love something that was about her in her heyday, but I don't think she would enjoy this at all. Its ambit is narrow from Greenwich Village to the Upper West Side and back and its subject matter is circumscribed, too. And I don't know how she does that. Most of those facilities aren't so great. It takes place in 1989, it's based on my grandmother and my family, and it's about her last years trying to hold onto her life and her gallery as she kind of slips away. A scene from Kenneth Lonergan's "The Waverly Gallery." November 11, 2018 / 10:16 AM I would have had more respect for their anxieties, even though I don't think I could have had more respect for their opinions about the film, 'cause they weren't very interesting or original or anything. As a screenwriter (You Can Count on Me, Manchester by the Sea) and dramatist (This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero), Mr. Lonergan has always portrayed human communication as an imperfect compromise. They come in quite a lot, and they have a big job to do. And I want you to really bring them to life more. And she was also very, very honest and blunt, without being mean, but it was very valuable, 'cause most people, you beg your friends to be truthful with you, and they tend to soft-pedal their criticisms a bit anyway, unless they're just smart asses who like to criticize you, in which case you don't need their help. And then it's often hard to describe how these things come about. ALTSCHUL: So when you find yourself in those situations, then you say, "I'm gonna write this. Make them more approachable? The Waverly Gallery (NY, Broadway) Oct 17, 2018 21:27:13 GMT harrietcraig likes this. With her dyed hair and her yesteryear-bohemia outfits, Gladys still cuts a vibrant figure, but her mind is starting to cloud. On the other hand, if the convention was to be more respectful of the screenplay, everyone would work around that just fine. He was arrested and I watched from a distance, afraid to let anybody know that I even knew him. I think this happens a lot. Review: Elaine May Might Break Your Heart in Waverly Gallery, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/theater/review-waverly-gallery-elaine-may-kenneth-lonergan.html. [8]), Charles Isherwood in Variety said, "The life trauma being depicted has an inherent pathos, and in Lonergan's hands, no small amount of comic potential. And then I also noticed, not to be immodest, that I often had an idea about how the scene could be played out. They wanna be alive. 2018 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. I wasn't, like, a saint, spending all my time taking care of her. I like these two characters. Ink Apr 24, 2019 Jul 07, 2019 . Why shouldn't they? Is it a kind of a separation? And I thought, "Oh gee. And none of us would budge. ALTSCHUL: Are you working on any plays, films? LONERGAN: I'd say so. After the 3pm performance of The Waverly Gallery, Dr. Ben Liptzin will discuss the impact of deminetia on the affected persona nd their family. Where did it go wrong? I rented an apartment in the back of the building she owned. Leo's character was sort of all over the place. "Yeah, I'm gonna live in grandma's building. LONERGAN: She lived for company and for society I mean the society of others, not "high society." LONERGAN: I am, I guess, because I was oriented that way from a very young age. Or the locks on the doors, the gas on the stove, or just arrangements of who's gonna take so-and-so to the doctor, to the eye doctor, and that becomes a big part of your life. And so you just kinda get in there and you just try to same as with your own work, you try to think of a person who feels vivid to you. And in the play the gallery's taken away before she's really ready to get out of it, and it seems so gratuitous, 'cause she would have been gone a year later anyway. ALTSCHUL: Do you love being given a problem? Years go by, you watch them again, they feel fresh, relevant. LONERGAN: Yeah, so I wrote the scene. ALTSCHUL: Really the smartest person you've ever known? A monologue about love, grief, joy, and a famed production's highs and lows CRITICS' PICKS. No you don't. Because it's really different from not having one. You can't just throw stuff down and have it be interesting. And also 'cause people tend to push older people aside when they start to slip away. And I think I just I would be a little more I would spend more time assuaging them and less time tryin' to convince them to get off my back. The show, first produced Off-Broadway in 2000, follows a grandson watching his grandmother slowly die from Alzheimer's disease. LONERGAN: Yeah, she was amazing. She also received a Drama League Award nomination and won a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. And my stepfather gave me the idea for "Analyze This," 'cause it was based on a real anecdote where a famous Mafioso went to one of his colleagues the only Sicilian psychoanalyst in New York at the time, (LAUGHS) who had been approached by a famous mobster who wanted to talk to him. I've always liked dialogue. As far as I'm aware. And I knew I had a good arc for a full story. People really work hard to help take care of their loved ones everywhere, all over the world. And I thought, the other thing is that I still don't feel the need to direct theatre all the time. ALTSCHUL: Why was that film a hard film to make in the end? What if the sister in the one act had a son, and the brother, who's a bit irresponsible, formed a relationship with him and then kind of let him down a lot?" And it seemed to me, I really liked the characters. No, they mean something else? And I was watching a play, it had a little kid in it. LONERGAN: No, I mean the play is about her at a age she wouldn't wanna be seen at, and a state of mind she wouldn't want anyone to be witness to. LONERGAN: Well, they bring so much to it. LONERGAN: I'm sure it did. She was somehow connected in with real estate, as she always found apartments for everyone, her friends and family I mean. ALTSCHUL: And it gives you confidence. But I think if all that happened to you in two days, you'd think you'd had quite an eventful weekend. (The minor character of the landlord, onstage at the Williamstown production, was dropped for the Off-Broadway 2000 production. LONERGAN: And if you wanna do everything for them, you should direct it yourself (LAUGH) or shut up. I mean, there are some directors, great directors, who aren't particularly oriented towards the acting. LONERGAN: No. Like, you notice that after you talk they get worse. There are places where there's this uncanny resonance that's both Elaine, the character she's playing, and my grandmother. In this extended transcript of an interview with "Sunday Morning" correspondent Serena Altschul, the playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan talks about the origin of his 2000 play "The Waverly Gallery," currently presented on Broadway in a critically-acclaimed revival starring Elaine May, as well as his experiences, positive and negative, in the world of film. ALTSCHUL: But she was an extraordinary woman. And the intervals between scenes which feature vintage street photography projections (by Tal Yarden) feel ponderously long. We're kinda thinking this is the story." They say "We really want you to write this"? I read the script. Or you're in a great mood and it's a rainy day. Rendered through the retrospective gaze of Gladyss grandson Daniel (a first-rate Lucas Hedges), who lives down the hall from Gladys it recalls Tennessee Williamss guilt-drenched The Glass Menagerie. But Mr. Lonergans lens on the past is sharper and harsher. The Waverly Gallery is a small play. ALTSCHUL: Can you talk about "Manchester by the Sea"? Like I thought, "Okay, so he'll let the kid down in various ways, three or four times." But anyway, my father read something that I had written and he said, "Your dialogue is very good." (CHUCKLES). LONERGAN: I would have tried to. As far as caring for elderly and people with dementia, aging people with Alzheimer's or any of these diseases, not much has changed today. ALTSCHUL: I mean that's what it is about, right? But it is a memoir play, I guess! Ill admit that several times I thought shed missed a line or fluffed one, but when I went back and read the script, there was everything shed said. Lucas Hedges and Elaine May in The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan, directed by Lila Neugebauer. That character's somewhat invented. ALTSCHUL: Just speakin' through her, right--? I was just sitting there typing. And I thought, "Oh, that sounds like a really good story." The playwright's story of family relationships and dementia, now on Broadway in a revival starring Elaine May, Joan Allen and Lucas Hedges, recalls his grandmother's last years in decline. The many layers of this serious affliction are explored in each character of the family unit. My overhead was very low. When does a young man decide, "I'm going to try directing now. They had, like six projects backed up and there was a teeny window which closed. He is trying to capture, with almost clinical precision, the patterns of speech of a willful woman sliding into senility. I tried to get the details right, he says, because thats what you remember when you think about something, so I tried like hell to get them the way they are.. And it's hard, it's not really for me to say. And while that is certainly part of its DNA, Lonergan's play also finds itself as part of an even more storied theatrical tradition - that of Greek tragedy. I'd say it's much more work in a funny way, 'cause as a playwright you can do the writing and pass it on to others, and hang around nervously to see if it turns out the way you wanted it to. In "The Waverly Gallery," the young writer Daniel Reed (Lucas Hedges) is overwhelmed with guilt regarding the care for his aging and increasingly demented grandmother Gladys (Elaine May), who. She rented the gallery from the early '60s to the late '80s, right before the kind of gentrification and real estate boom really hit the Village.
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