ajhlovestheatre

THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES

by Richard Greenberg

directed by Blanche McIntyre 

Hampstead Theatre, London – until 22 November 2025

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval 

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2025/the-assembled-parties/

Early on in Richard Greenberg’s 2013 The Assembled Parties, now receiving a belated UK premiere at Hampstead, a wealthy American Democrat complains about the incoming Republican President, and no, they’re not decrying the wildly divisive current administration. Tracy-Ann Oberman’s tough-talking, histrionic/neurotic Long Island Jewish Faye is referring to the arrival in the White House of former film star Ronald Reagan back at the dawn of the 1980s when the first half of this Tony-nominated family dramedy is set. Fast forward twenty years to act two, it’s 2020 and loquacious, fabulous Faye is at it again, but this time the source of her ire is incoming President George W Bush, another Republican leader.

Greenberg’s talky but rewarding play, situated entirely in the Bascov family’s palatial, rent-stabilised Upper West Side apartment at Christmas two decades apart, isn’t an overtly political piece but uses discussion of the current President as a handy indicator of historical period and the source of some humour (“Republican Jews, what is that?” snorts Faye derisively, “it’s like ‘skinny fat people’”). Essentially it’s an elevated hybrid of sitcom and soap opera, laced with an elegant, vivid use of language and some gloriously sassy humour.

Although Jewish, the Bascovs are so assimilated and such quintessential New Yorkers that they celebrate Christmas in high style, and the curtain rises on fragrant lady of the house Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt in an entrancing London stage debut) welcoming Sam Marks’ Jeff, the eager, impressed college friend of her golden boy son Scott.  We also encounter Julie’s go-getting husband Ben (Daniel Abelson, excellent), their sickly, bed-bound four year old Timmy, and Scott himself (Alexander Marks), also clearly unwell and in thrall to a feisty, unseen girlfriend. It’s enlivened considerably by the arrival of Oberman (an actor with a proven and unrivalled ability to take a scene by the scruff of its neck and revitalise it) as Ben’s sister Faye and a suitably grizzled David Kennedy as her thuggish husband Mort, in from New Jersey for the holidays.

Played out on a slowly revolving stage (nicely evocative design by James Cotterill), the first act of Blanche McIntyre’s production is stronger on atmosphere than pace, and you may find yourself heading out into the interval full of questions. Why is Mort blackmailing Ben for an heirloom necklace that is likely worthless? Why does Faye and Ben’s mother apparently hate her? What’s with Jeff’s vitriolic phone conversation with his own mother? What’s wrong with Scott?

Stick with it though, as the second half is an absolute beauty. It’s infinitely richer, not least because it centres on Julie and Faye (several of the men are dead, reinforcing the belief that women really are the stronger sex) and their longstanding friendship. Most, not all, of the questions posed by the first act are resolved, but there are insights into the nature of parenthood, about kindness and about how people can show up for you when you don’t necessarily expect it, that are pure bittersweet gold. Cotterill’s set opens out and becomes more specific, as though to suggest that the passage of time imparts more information and detail. Furthermore,  Oberman and Westfeldt’s performances become even more glorious. 

If Faye is the more flamboyant creation, and Oberman, looking like a million bucks, inhabits her completely and irresistibly, Julie is fascinating and often more surprising. A beloved figure that the other characters seek to protect at all costs but who is savvier than she appears, she’s almost a Manhattanite version of Arthur Miller’s Kate Keller but with a wider array of eccentricities and hang-ups. 

Greenberg gives her a charmingly baroque way of expressing herself, befitting of a former actress (“So lovely, Christmas, although you find all the dying tends to accelerate around now. And of course there’s Bing Crosby, he’s a tribulation, don’t you find? You can’t escape him”), but a couple of sharp edges to offset the sweetness. “A cheerful nature is an utterly ruthless thing,” she informs an understandably enchanted Jeff, “I’m the most ruthless woman you’ll ever meet.” Westfeldt catches every note and nuance.

There’s still a slight hesitancy to McIntyre’s staging that will probably iron out as the run continues, and The Assembled Parties is likely to frustrate anybody looking for action rather than talk and mood. Within its own (deceptively ambitious) confines however, it’s a work of considerable warmth and depth, a witty elegy for a way of New York living that feels like it’s teetering on the brink of extinction. It’s one that stays with you after the performance, and this London debut is a lovely way of commemorating Richard Greenberg, one of America’s most prolific and insightful modern playwrights, following his death this summer. Vahksin.