Women of a Certain Age: Election Year in the Life of One Family, Play Three NYC Reviews and Tickets
About the Show
Tony Award-winning playwright and director Richard Nelson returns to the Public Theater with the final chapter his new three-play cycle about the Gabriels of Rhinebeck, New York.
Show-Score Member Reviews (73)
See it if You liked the first two in this series. You appreciate amazing ensemble acting. You are drawn to contemporary family stories.
Don't see it if You need action and flash. Current events and complex family dynamics bore you. Read more
See it if you like plays that have a quiet beauty. This play says so much without ever saying anything directly. It's an incredible peak at ourselves.
Don't see it if you can't appreciate nuance or if you don't like sentiment. This is a beautiful portrait of a slice of real life.
See it if You've been following the family and they're interested to see the future
Don't see it if You want a lot of flash and drama this is low key and it certainly helps to know the chArchters before hand
See it if Yes, a functional family faces disappointments and loneliness, too. So touchingly laid open for us and so insightful about women's lives...
Don't see it if ...as well as family relationships, it's breathtaking. We need this family who accept one another's foibles and pain with love and grace.
See it if you are a lover of slice of life plays. I can't explain fully why these plays about regular people move me so but they do.
Don't see it if you aren't ready for your heart to hurt a little.
See it if Gabriels channel collective anxieties in a way that creates space for thoughts & feelings of empathy to bubble up; no political hectoring.
Don't see it if don't want to experience the sorrows of the moment &of the people; but play magically weaves threads of re-connection to carry you home.
See it if you would enjoy an intelligent contemporary play with a mix of current events and family drama and comedy.
Don't see it if you didn't like the Apple Family plays.
See it if you enjoy watching actors truly inhabit their characters; if you like meticulously crafted dialogue (& lots of it); if you want to be moved
Don't see it if you need action-packed drama; if you can't bear the idea of being (invisibly) dropped into another (very chatty) family's dinner preparation
Critic Reviews (23)
"As the shadows draw in around the Gabriels, they remain remarkably gallant, and you want to cling to them for dear life. More than once, I was filled with sadness over the knowledge that this was the last time I would be seeing these characters and the superb ensemble playing them...Nelson, who also directed, has done a valuable thing with the Gabriel plays...The darkness threatens us all, and we must find a way to make common cause or the future will be bleak."
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"It's Nelson's greatest strength as playwright and director here that he relegates politics mostly to the background; it's oddly secondary that this is at once the most and least momentous installment in the series with nothing and everything happening simultaneously, and at a dizzying pace. Every moment is flooded with meaning...More than ever, it's the acting that sells it. Everyone is superb."
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“The final play in Richard Nelson's latest cycle, ‘The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family’ is aptly titled as it is devoted to the ladies of the family. ‘Women of a Certain Age’ is an extraordinarily elegiac and Shavian experience of the way we live now in middle-class America. Beginning with seemingly off-hand humor, the play eventually creates a spellbinding mood. You are in the arena of the kitchen alongside the members of the family.”
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"This final play continues to be timely. The situation now is a reflection of middle-class Americans caught up in events that made this election so contentious and its aftermath so problematic...Nelson is a very good writer and 'Women of A Certain Age' has tapped into his gift for finely observed and developed characters. He's also that rare playwright who is a good director who knows how to move his actors around naturally and gracefully."
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"Last Tuesday–Election Night–night was excruciating. The Gabriel plays are merely frustrating...The saving grace is the two performances put in by Sanders and Maxwell. These two have a connection that is pure gold, and it becomes the center of the evening. The other three are planets in orbit giving vague representations of their characters. Each seems to be waiting for someone to stop speaking so that they can say their lines. An altogether underwhelming effect."
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"The cast are all completely marvelous. And in this final installment, they are only more engrained into their characters. They make being in the presence of this family feel authentic, comfortable, and easy…It’s a beautiful structure for us to peek into the world of a troubled but real family, and listen in. To get to know them, witness them, and ultimately become enmeshed into their lives emotionally."
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"Most of the time I listened with impatience to this supposedly socially engaged family...I left feeling that the promise and process in which the plays were put together wound up at best a gimmick to market them. This is unfortunate because, if it weren’t taking place (and being written) on Election Day, I could better appreciate 'Women of a Certain Age' as a well-acted, gentle and insightful look at a family facing many struggles, emotionally and financially."
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"Nelson beautifully illustrates how one particular American family stratum lives in our day and age...The irresistible thing about the Gabriels is how widely their conversation ranges...The Trump-Clinton presidential contest is one of the topics raised...If there’s one element in Nelson’s surpassing work that doesn’t entirely compute, it’s ironically the time spent on such topics...Nonetheless, Nelson’s accomplishment as a playwright is matched by his accomplishment as a director."
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