From left: Lucy (Charlotte Bydwell) stands behind Sally (Rita Wolf), watching a dance video, as May (Matilda Sakamoto) and Suzanne (Yvonne Woods) work on dinner, in Richard Nelson’s What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad.
It finally dawned on me that theater was back in New York City when I was once again in the presence of characters in a Richard Nelson play as they sliced bread, grated cheese, sipped wine, and had conversations that made you feel like an eavesdropper more than an audience member.
What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad, now playing at the Frederick Loewe Theatre as part of the Hunter Theater Project, is the final chapter of Nelson’s Rhinebeck Panorama, a series of plays centered on three Rhinebeck, N.Y., families: the Apples, the Gabriels, and the Michaels. As Nelson said in a recent New York Times profile, he strives for “verisimilitude” rather than just realism. “To be as opposed to do,” Nelson writes in the playbill, “That, I tell my actors, is always our goal.” He’s aided in this quest by the consistent and understated brilliance of actors Jay O. Sanders and Maryann Plunkett, who have appeared in all 12 plays of the Panorama.
Kate (Maryann Plunkett, left), who was married to Rose not long before she died, listens to Suzanne.
The Michaels were introduced at the Public Theater in 2019. The setting was the Rhinebeck house of Rose Michael (Brenda Wehle), a choreographer and dance-company founder, now dying of ovarian cancer, who, along with her partner Kate Harris (Plunkett), hosts family and friends for dinner in advance of a revival of some of Rose’s dances. Guests included Sally (Rita Wolf) and Irenie (Haviland Morris), former dancers in Rose’s company; Sally’s husband, theater producer David Michael (Sanders), also Rose’s ex-husband; David and Rose’s daughter, Lucy Michael (Charlotte Bydwell), a dancer and choreographer; and May Smith (Matilda Sakamoto), Rose’s niece, a dancer. As in many of Nelson’s works, there isn’t much plot, yet nearly everyone on stage is such a fully fledged character that the play manages to reach emotional climaxes that take you by surprise.
“Small, almost mundane, moments take on rich significance....”
In What Happened?, Rose is now dead, and David, Kate, Sally, and Irenie join Lucy and May in Angers, France, at the house of another former dancer from Rose’s company, Suzanne (Yvonne Woods). Lucy is in a seemingly endless dance residency, and May has been there for the past two months, after having helped take care of Rose. The play takes place on Sept. 8, 2021.
What Happened? has all the hallmarks of a Nelson production: the actors enter in darkness, as Katie Herzig’s “Lost and Found” plays, and assemble the rustic kitchen set (by Jason Ardizzone-West); a meal (lasagna with roasted cauliflower) is prepared and consumed as the play unfolds; transitions between scenes are accomplished by brief blackouts and an eerie whooshing sound (lighting by Jennifer Tipton; sound by Will Pickens); the actors do not project their voices, but speak conversationally; and, perhaps most important, small, almost mundane, moments take on rich significance.
David (Jay O. Sanders, left) and Kate, at the dinner table. Photographs by Jason Ardizzone-West.
Without argument, without conflict in the obvious sense, the audience learns about the characters’ fears and problems, some exacerbated by the pandemic. For example, Suzanne’s crushing fear of loneliness in anticipation of Lucy and May departing. Or David and Sally’s financial worries and David’s uncertainly over a new opportunity to take charge of a theater in Utica, which seems to stand in for the larger question of the viability of theater and the arts in a post-COVID world. Or Lucy’s conflicted reverence for her mother, which can shade into insecurity and anxiety. While Rose may be gone, she looms large, as nearly every conversation is connected to her, affectionately but without neglecting her tendency to domineer. This connection to Rose includes vibrant dance sequences, featuring Bydwell and Sakamoto (dance consultant Gwyneth Jones), which are meant to be pieces of Rose’s that have been reimagined by Lucy.
The play is melancholic but not hopeless. “As long as there’s life, there’s happiness,” Irenie says, quoting Pierre in War and Peace: “There’s much, much still to come.” For the audience, there was certainly the happiness of gathering in person in the theater to watch such fine actors, in particular Plunkett and Sanders, who have anchored the Rhinebeck Panorama as members of the Michaels, Gabriels, and Apples. Their performances are so naturalistic and beautifully realized that one could almost take them for granted. It is fitting that the play ends with Kate, alone, always a bit of the outsider in this group of dancers and dance aficionados, exhausted from jet lag, contemplating the dirty dishes in the sink, and thinking, presumably, like the rest of us, “What happened?”
What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad runs through Oct. 8 at the Frederick Loewe Theatre (119 E 68th St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and 3 p.m. on Sunday. For tickets, information, and pandemic attendance guidelines, visit huntertheaterproject.org.
