A Quest for Truth and a Sense of Time
I first encountered Richard Greenberg‘s work in 1985, when I saw his comedy Life Under Water in a one-act marathon at the Ensemble Studio Theater. Rich was a recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and mere minutes into the show I was dazzled by his writing—I knew I was in the presence of a bold, perceptive, biting, irreverent, and very smart playwright. Later, in the New york TimesFrank Rich called the play “a full-bodied 45-minute work that marks the arrival of a young playwright with a big future.”
A couple of years later, I read Rich’s Eastern Standarda comedy about yuppies with serious themes of the AIDS crisis, wealth disparity, urban disillusionment, and the search for authentic meaning. I loved it and immediately offered to give the play its New York premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club.The production, starring Rich’s close friend Patricia clarkson, transferred to Broadway that same season.
Over the next three and a half decades, MTC became an artistic home for Rich, and we had the honor of producing a total of 11 world, New York and Broadway premieres of his plays, including one of his greatest works, The American Planon all three of our stages. (Our world premiere opened at MTC’s City Center Stage II in 1990, then moved to our larger off-broadway Stage I, and had its Broadway premiere in 2009 starring Rich’s close friend Lily Rabe.) The piece, following a family’s struggle to move into the future while chained to thier past, begins like a romantic period drama and slowly reveals itself to be a darker, more psychologically complex character study.
In 1997, we gave Rich’s complex and emotionally resonant Three Days of Rain its New York debut after it premiered at South Coast Rep.The story of siblings who reunite with their childhood friend to uncover secrets about their late parents’ past jumps back in time by 30 years between its two acts, exploring the ways in which memory, legacy, and miscommunication can shape our understanding of the people we love. It went on to be produced at the Donmar in London and at Steppenwolf in Chicago to great acclaim, followed by regional productions across the country and abroad.
When MTC opened our permanent Broadway home at the newly renovated Biltmore (now the Samuel J. Friedman) Theatre in 2003, I chose to present Rich’s brilliant play The Violet hour as our inaugural production. This play captures the exhilarating—and frequently enough disorienting—moment just before the future arrives, following a young publisher opening a new publishing house with extremely limited resources. It beautifully embodies the spirit of embarking on a venture with immense promise. Each character teeters at the edge of conversion—personally, professionally, and culturally. The title itself refers to that moment at dusk when the world seems suspended between light and darkness—a metaphor for the characters’ potential and unknowable outcomes. The piece contains so many of the themes we had come to know as Rich’s signature, and I thought there could be no better omen for our ascent to Broadway.
My respect and admiration for Rich continued to grow as we worked together again and again. I had the honor of directing the last three of Rich’s plays we produced,and I treasured my experience collaborating with him on The Assembled Partiesa brilliant piece about the complications of a family uncovering the truth of its past. The story hinges on an act of deep kindness and compassion between two women, beautifully portrayed by Rich’s dear friend Jessica Hecht and Judith Light, who went on to win the Tony for her performance. I cherished the rehearsals for that show as the company and I delved into creating his intricate characters, peeled back the layers of this family’s history, and looked up the words in the script that we’d never heard before. Those days were followed by long nightly phone calls with Rich making cuts to the script and just plain schmoozing.It was one of the greatest joys of my 50-plus-year career.
Every play Rich wrote had the hallmark of his brilliance, and many shared a common theme: characters on a quest for the truth of unexplained, secret, or misunderstood events from the past. His fascination with time—not just as a backdrop,but as an active,compelling presence—was a central force in many of his plays. His characters are frequently caught between eras, haunted by the past or paralyzed by a future they can’t quite grasp. In other words, who we were, and who we became. But no matter the subject, Rich’s writing was always so beautifully accomplished, and his plays are marked by wit, compassion, insight and deep humanity.
I adored Rich, both as an artist and as a friend. We so often brainstormed, dreamed, and kvetched together over lunch at Blossom in his beloved neighborhood of Chelsea. I will miss him terribly, but I find comfort in knowing that his body of work now comprises such a large part of the American theatrical canon. He left an enduring artistic legacy, and his work will go on to entertain, educate, and enlighten many future generations of theatre lovers. I know that would mean the world to him.
Lynne Meadow, artistic director, Manhattan Theatre Club
