The Apple Family Plays: The Public Theater New York

This canon of drama arrived at the festival garlanded in praise and glory, a dangerous thing perhaps. Would it live up to the word? Well it did and more so, what a privilege to see this incredible company deliver this powerful work – and deliver it in a way that added new meaning to the words intimate and theatre. To sit in the Corn Exchange and see this was an intensely personal experience. I became oblivious to the audience, I became oblivious to being audience. I became a voyeur, watching the Apple family through a crack in a closet door or a chink in a curtain. Seeing how the dynamic of a close knit group of relatives react to each other, to society, to history and to the changing face of American and world politics. But also to those familial ties, the hidden histories, the loves and favoritism, the hates and conflicts, power struggles, deceits, illness, death, admissions… Not once did I tire of this family saga played out across the dining table, that constant bond of food. I loved too the quiet, the almost whispered performance, it caught my attention and focused my mind. I think for others too as across the four plays there was a universal quiet and calm in the auditorium. I cried too, I cried a lot as the company so discreetly played with my emotions and reminded me of how the dynamics of my own family have, over the years, driven me to peaks of joy and depths of despair. Truly memorable, deserving of the hype in every sense, affecting, impressing, uplifting!
The Corn Exchange
2 & 4 May
Andrew Kay
5 stars