A.R. Gurney's name is a sure-fire box office draw at Off-Broadway and regional theaters. You can count on seeing a Gurney play practically every season; if not a brand-new one, then a revival of one of his super hits like Love Letters or Sylvia.
"Politicians poised to sling mud might take a pointer or two from A R Gurney: Good manners can be lethal weapons, and a glancing sideswipe may cause more damage than a punch in the nose.
An expert demonstration of such tactics is on...in Mr Gurney's disarming new play, MRS FARNSWORTH.... Though it deals with revelations that are the stuff of smear campaigns, MRS FARNSWORTH is as polite and sweetly subversive a political attack as you're likely ever to come across.
...MRS FARNSWORTH is set in a creative-writing class in Manhattan. Class is under way when a resplendently well-groomed student makes a late and incongruous entrance, fresh from the Connecticut suburbs and fluttering with apologies. It seems she wants to learn to write because she has a story that urgently needs to be told. Mrs Farnsworth's narrative starts to sound like a memoir in which only the names have been changed. Could be the boy in question be the young George W Bush?
`Political writing and political discussions are simple-minded and reductive,' Mr Farnsworth says. That's the opposite, he continues, of good writing, `which should be subtle, complicated and ambiguous.' Even standing on a soapbox, Mr Gurney happily heeds Mr Farnsworth's admonition."
Ben Brantley, The New York Times
Mr. and Mrs. Farnsworth will be played by Christine Crawfis and Bruce Pileggi with MMSC newcomer, John Patrick Bray, as Gordon, the creative writing instructor. Creating havoc as other students in the class will be Elizabeth Barrows, Heather Berry and Craig Chapman.
Left to right: John Patrick Bray, Craig Chapman, Christine Crawfis and Bruce Pileggi.
Not pictured: Heather Berry and Elizabeth Barrows
Photo Credit: Marlis Momber
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 Photo Credit: Marlis Momber
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John Patrick Bray  |
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