Oy veh! Whatever that means...
It’s a packed house at the Hampstead to see Richard Greenberg's 2013 play Assembled Parties, and we are not disappointed.
Set at Christmas 1980 and 2000 in stylish New York’s Upper West side it follows what I can best describe as an Ayckbourn-ian trajectory, and like Ayckbourn, Greenberg combines well observed wry comedy (this time New York Jewish) with well observed familial fracture.
The production is blessed with Tracy-Ann Oberman as the sister-in-law of Jennifer Westfeldt’s slightly ditzy mater familias – Oberman fully ‘gets’ the New York Jewish humour and delivery necessary to fix this play culturally. And is a very fine comic actor capable of a fuller range than simple schtick. The third actor who appears in both Acts (1980 and 2000) is Sam Marks – the necessary outsider (university friend of the son of the house) and he binds the play together.
The play presents, and is (there were gales of laughter) as a comedy, but it is a comedy set in fractured relationships and failures and hidden lies. And uncomfortable comedy is that much better than cosy.
The first Act is on a revolve, with three key parts of the (vast) apartment and the action (and revelations) moving from the kitchen, to a sitting room, to the dining room (with two bedrooms thrown in for good measure). The second act is in a single dressed set – a slightly shabbier stage of the apartment’s trajectory and just in the sitting room looking towards the dining room. The change of set type offers some interest and makes some sense.
The play was hugely successful in New York (no surprises there) but it looks to be that in London as well, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a transfer. It offers no disappointments.