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Family Feud: Sam Forman's 'The Moscows of Nantucket'
TBD Arts
May 12, 2011
By Maura Judkis (Twitter @maurajudkis)
When playwright Sam Forman was marginally employed and living with his
parents, he wrote a play about a young man who is marginally employed
and living with his parents, who will now be played by an actor who, by
his own description, was last year marginally employed and living with
his parents. Because really, isn't the post-adolescence adolescence just
another rite of passage these days? Forman thinks so, and his new play,
The Moscows of Nantucket, which premieres at Theater J, explores the
strained familial relations that kidults face.
"It does speak something to the idea that for some people, the twenties
have become extended teens and the thirties are the new twenties," says
James Flanagan, who plays Ben Moscow, a young writer struggling to get
on his feet. "When I did a reading for it about a year ago, I was living
with my parents after just having dropped out of New York. So it was
disturbingly close to home."
In The Moscows of Nantucket, Ben must spend a summer facing up to the
disappointment of a once-promising writing career fizzling, and his
jealous rivalry with his successful brother, a Hollywood writer with a
starlet girlfriend, all in the presence of his well-meaning but
sharp-tongued parents. And that's another thing that Forman and Flanagan
have in common with their character: A sibling who has made it in
Hollywood, while they stayed behind on the East Coast to pursue
theatrical careers.
"Our relationship is nothing like the relationship in this play," says
Flanagan of his brother. "He's off in Los Angeles, he does some
independent film stuff, he's very successful, he's coming into his own
right now, and that is a lot like the play … but we don't have the
rivalry, we're very supportive of each other."
Forman wanted to explore a sibling rivalry that, for him, is also nonexistent.
"Having a brother that does work in Hollywood in real life, our dynamic
is way less combative," says Forman, whose brother is a reality TV
producer for Extreme Makeover Home Edition. "I was interested anyway in
the brothers being in a closer field for the more successful one to help
the other one." CONTINUE READING
Sam Forman Returns to Theater J
Washingtonian
In “The Moscows of Nantucket,” the playwright once again channels Woody Allen
By Leslie Milk
New York playwright Sam Forman hit it big in Washington last year with
The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall. The Theater J production got rave
reviews and a Helen Hayes Award nomination.
Now Forman is back with The Moscows of Nantucket, a fish-out-of-water
play about a Jewish family spending the summer in the WASP wonderland of
Nantucket. Remember, Nantucket is the island off Massachusetts where
presidential candidate John Kerry destroyed any chance he had of
projecting a good-ol’-boy image when he was photographed windsurfing a
stone’s throw from his island mansion.
In Forman’s play, the Moscow parents have retired to Nantucket for the
summer months. Richard Moscow was a workaholic financier. Now he has
nothing to do but look at his BlackBerry and try to connect with his
adult children. His wife was an antiques dealer and has unleashed her
decorating skills on their summer home. In her spare time, she manages
the lives of her sons.
Those sons arrive in Nantucket for a long weekend. The older one has
brought his girlfriend, a Hollywood star who grew up in a trailer park
in Georgia—a goldfish swimming in a sea of gefilte. “There’s love and
guilt and plenty of conflict,” Forman says. CONTINUE READING
'The Moscows of Nantucket': For playwright, it's family time
Washington Post
By Lavanya Ramanathan
Thursday, May 5, 2011
When playwright Sam Forman's "The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall" debuted at Theater J in 2009, his knack for one-liners and preternatural understanding of frustrated 20-something New Yorkers naturally won him comparisons to Woody Allen.
With his latest play, "The Moscows of Nantucket," which debuts at Theater J on Wednesday, the 34-year-old playwright wades into the muck of family dynamics, dredging up one woefully messed-up clan.
"When we did 'Rise and Fall of Annie Hall,' there were a lot of comparisons to Woody Allen and Neil Simon and Wendy Wasserstein," director Shirley Serotsky says during a break from rehearsals. "When I came into this play . . . I was like, 'Sam, actually what you are is like a young, Jewish Edward Albee.' "
Reached by phone in New York, Forman sounds flattered by the suggestion. "That's cool. If I had to say my two favorite playwrights in the world, they'd have to be Chekhov and Albee. I've been writing plays since I was a kid, and 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is the first play that made a huge impression on me."
That imprint is clearly felt in "Moscows."
"People watching it will recognize that this family has its own bizarre quirks and idiosyncracies and way of doing things," Serotsky says. The Moscow family uses sarcasm the way other people use pronouns. Mom and Dad trade barbs, and brothers Benjamin and Michael are openly hostile. But audiences, she says, may recognize similarities with their own families. CONTINUE READING
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