THE FOUR OF US PRESS
January 20–February 21, 2010
By Itamar Moses
Directed by Daniel DeRaey
When Ben’s first novel vaults him into literary stardom, his best friend David, a struggling playwright, is thrilled for his newfound success...or is he? This poignant play explores the nature of friendship, memory and what happens when your dreams come true—for your best friend.
FACT SHEET
PRESS RELEASE
Washington Jewish Week
1/27/2010 8:59:00 PM Email this article • Print this article
'The Four of Us' dissects male friendship gone awry
'by Lisa Traiger
Arts Correspondent
In an era when long-lost friends reunite via Facebook, write abbreviated notes instead of letters through e-mail and have heart-to-heart conversations while waiting in line at the grocery store, Itamar Moses reintroduces us to old-fashioned friendship, when face time mattered and hanging out ‹ in a scruffy summer sublet or a hill overlooking a campfire ‹ created a safety zone where friends could let down their guards and rant, weep or bicker.
In The Four of Us, Moses dissects a friendship between two writers ‹ one recently successful and one still struggling. It's no secret that the play, which is onstage at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center's Theater J through Feb. 21, parallels Moses' real-life friendship with Jonathan Safran Foer, the uber-successful young writer who burst onto the literary scene with his critically lauded first novel, Everything Is Illuminated, in 2002. CONTINUE READING
Metro Weekly
Writers' Block
In The Four of Us, sentences go unfinished and people tend to talk at -- not to -- one another
by Tom Avila
Published on January 27, 2010, 10:47pm
The advantage to spending some portion of every day scanning blogs and Twitter feeds is that, sometimes, you stumble upon a question you've never previously considered.
A recent e-wander yielded the following thought: Has the evolution of communications technology created a situation where many of literature's greatest devices no longer work?
Think about it. The missed connection would now be foiled by a cell-phone call or text message. Whether or not someone has really fallen in love or gotten engaged is probably pasted on their Facebook page. Electronic communication aside, even if an old school pen-and-paper letter has to reach someone immediately, any number of overnight carriers can not only ensure delivery, but confirm delivery with a recorded signature.
Juliet to Romeo: ''Not really dead. ;)''
Romeo to Juliet: ''ROFL.'' CONTINUE READING
The Examiner
Theater J's 'The Four of Us' has nary a dull moment
By: Chris Klimek
Special to The Examiner
January 29, 2010
We're supposed to forgive our enemies, consume more vegetables and less alcohol, play fair, love but one person at a time, wear seat belts. When our friends succeed, we're expected to be happy. That is what is supposed to happen.
Of pain-free obedience are boring stories made. Itamar Moses' 2008 two-man play "The Four of Us" is never dull, and given the picayune-ity of its stakes, that's much, much more than the faint compliment it sounds like.
The narrative dissects a friendship among two boys-to-men over a 10-year period. We meet David and Benjamin in their mid-20s. One's a playwright, the other a novelist who, as comes to light during an increasingly fraught after-dinner chat, has just had the nullifying prefix "aspiring" blasted off of his title in spectacular, quit-your-day-job fashion. CONTINUE READING
The Onion
The Four Of Us
by Maura Judkis February 2, 2010
Jonathan Safran Foer is truly a sanctimonious douchebag. Or, at least, that's how he comes across in Theater J's production of The Four Of Us, a play written by Foer's real-life friend, Itamar Moses. In Moses' play, a young playwright struggles to come to terms with his jealousy of a novelist friend's big break. The smug, not-so-suffering novelist is named Ben, but Moses' thinly-veiled reference isn't fooling anybody—he might as well have named the main character Fonathan Jafran Soer.
Ben (Dan Crane) and budding playwright David (Karl Miller) met at music camp as teens, and they've shared a lasting bromance ever since. That is, until Ben's first novel—the one he wrote during their summer together in Prague, while David was out carousing with European girls—gets published and earns him a two-million-dollar advance at the ripe old age of 25. Upon hearing the news, David does a spit-take and can hardly contain his seething jealousy—a jealousy that seems all too easy for Moses to write. CONTINUE READING
WETA's Around Town Video
DC THEATRE SCENE
The Four of Us
January 26, 2010
by Hunter Styles
Friendships come and go, but publishing rights are forever. Or is it the other way round? Director Daniel De Raey and his two-man cast foster a wealth of good comic realism in this new study of camaraderie and competition by the emerging writer Itamar Moses. At times the script meanders, leaving the old theater adage “show, don’t tell” buried under too much dialogue. At its core, though, the play is an earnest inspection of how sudden glory for one best friend can rock the boat of a brotherhood long thought tethered to firm ground. CONTINUE READING
Washington City Paper
Reviewed: The Four of Us
At Theater J, a friendship threatened over art.
By Glen Weldon
Posted: January 27, 2010
Envy gets a bad rap. Yes, she’s one of the Seven Deadlies, and yeah, she’s got a couple Commandments all to herself. But what your Sunday school teacher never told you about Envy is that, under the right conditions, she can be a powerful muse. Green-eyed case in point: The Four of Us, Itamar Moses’ witty, engaging (if slightly overlong) two-character play about the 10-year friendship between a young novelist and a young playwright. Karl Miller is the sardonic, self-doubting playwright who struggles with the sudden and outrageously lucrative success of his friend’s first novel. Happily, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch an actor as naturalistic and unself-conscious as Miller do the requisite struggling: He pads around the stage in a sleepy, discomfited daze; we sense that he’s sincerely happy for his friend even as jealousy roils in his gut, causing him to bite the ends off his sentences. CONTINUE READING
Washington Post
Review: Mostly on the money - 'The Four of Us' by Itamar Moses at Theater J
By Nelson Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
It seems that money wrecks a beautiful friendship in "The Four of Us," the clever play about young literary pals now at Theater J. A struggling playwright finds the sudden success of his novelist chum hard to swallow; the news of an out-of-the-blue $2 million publishing advance plainly drives an awkward wedge between them.
Do you need to know that this story seems to be a little bit true? The publicity surrounding "The Four of Us," which has already been produced in New York and San Diego, reveals that playwright Itamar Moses had an obvious model for this funny, probing drama: his own relationship with novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, whose debut novel, "Everything Is Illuminated," was quickly adapted for Hollywood by actor Liev Schreiber.
That's pretty much what happens to Benjamin, the slightly frosty novelist whose windfall leaves his playwright buddy David at a loss for words. The two-character drama tosses a bit of showbiz glitter at the audience as the lads ease into the sticky yet seductive realm of movie-style narcissism and what it inevitably does to the fine writing of stage and page. And Moses certainly isn't reluctant to air sour grapes about the writing life, taking well-informed aim at audience talk-backs and critics (the reviews of his play in Indiana leave David feeling pretty cranky). CONTINUE READING
Washington Post: Preview
An illuminating look at Itamar Moses's 'The Four of Us' at Theater J
By Lavanya Ramanathan
Friday, January 15, 2010
Here's one way to get your play noticed: Deliver a detailed anatomy of the unraveling of your friendship with someone famous, and just watch the sparks fly.
Upon its off-Broadway debut in 2008, Itamar Moses's "The Four of Us" was pegged as one of the most thinly veiled literary takedowns since "The Devil Wears Prada." One character clearly seemed to be Moses, a prodigious young playwright of nothing you would have heard of.
And the other, more famous character? All signs (and jabs) pointed to Moses's friend Jonathan Safran Foer, the prodigious young author of the blockbuster novel "Everything Is Illuminated."
Ask Moses whether "The Four of Us," which opens Wednesday at Theater J, is in fact autobiographical, and he'll deftly avoid naming names. CONTINUE READING
THE EDGE
Four of Us
by Charlotte Asmuth
EDGE Contributor
Monday Jan 18, 2010
Itamar Moses, a darling of American theatre critics since his play Bach at Leipzig opened in New York in 2005, has been called "a young American Stoppard." Moses’ perhaps autobiographical play-within-a-play, The Four of Us, currently at Theater J under the direction of Daniel De Raey, premiered at The Manhattan Theatre Club in March of 2008.
To call the relationship between its two protagonists, Benjamin (Dan Crane) and David (Karl Miller), strained is an understatement. As the play opens, David, an as-yet unsuccessful playwright, is following through on a seven year old pact by treating his friend Benjamin, whose new novel has hit the bestseller list, to lunch. What follows is a meditation on what happens when half of a friendship stumbles into success. David is jealous of Benjamin’s self-possession, which turns out to be deceptive. Benjamin is guilty and far more vulnerable than David perceives him to be; of the two, Benjamin is the one who ends up crying in the final scene. CONTINUE READING
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