The Twin Cities has not one, but two comedic plays on offer the next few weeks, with “Rumors” in Bloomington at Community Players Theatre and “Grand Horizons” at Heartland Theatre in Normal.
Both plays open this weekend; “Grand Horizons” extends three weeks, closing on Sept. 16.
Now retired from Illinois State University, former theater professor Cyndee Brown chooses her projects carefully, but couldn't say no to directing "Grand Horizons."
“I took quite a break,” she said. “I had done theater almost straight, without any breaks, since I was age 16. It felt kind of like the right thing to do.”
“Grand Horizons’” story and characters pulled Brown back into the director’s chair, in part, because she felt like she could relate to Bill and Nancy, a married couple with two adult children who live in a retirement community — called Grand Horizons.
“The couple in the play have just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary,” Brown said. “My husband and I just celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. I felt a real kinship with that particular age group and a particular interest in their family dynamic.”
“Grand Horizons'” opening scene shows Bill and Nancy (premiered on Broadway by James Cromwell and Jane Alexander and played here by Dean Brown and Lynda Rettrick) sitting down to a routine, silent dinner, snapping crisp, linen napkins over their laps, clinking forks and knives on their plates.
“I think I would like a divorce,” Nancy says. After a comedic pause, Bill’s only response is, “All right.”
Black out.
'Simonesque' or feminist?
Playwright Bess Wohl’s snappy, Tony-nominated play is practically brand new — it premiered in 2020 — but has been called "Simonesque" in deference to the revered “Rumors" playwright who practically wrote the book on American comedy.
''I often write about the poignancy of the ending of a marriage, and who gets hurt in it,'' Simon said in a 1988 New York Times interview ahead of “Rumors’” premiere. He died in 2018. “And sometimes it can't be helped. I don't think there's a villain and a hero or a heroine in the marriage. More than likely it's life itself that dictates the end of it.''
Indeed, if Simon had written “Eat, Pray, Love,” it might look something like “Grand Horizons.” Following Bill’s unemotional endorsement, Nancy embarks on a journey to find herself and uncover the fullness of life as a woman of a certain age.
“It is a comedy,” Brown said, “so it has a lot in common with other comedies. But it’s not a fall-on-a-banana-peel, farcical kind of a comedy. The comedy is in the relationships. It’s sometimes in the discomfort and the provocative nature of this piece.”
Nancy and Bill’s adult sons (Thomas Brown and Jeff Ready) are hyperbolically afflicted by the news of their parents breaking up. And all three female characters (played by Rettrick, Connie Blick and Carolyn Stucky) ask themselves questions of what gives their lives meaning and purpose — irrespective of the men around them. In that sense, “Grand Horizons” is, in fact, not at all like Simon, and might conversely be called a funny feminist treatise.
“It very unabashedly says that you can have a life — you can have a sex life, you can have an intellectual life, you can have an emotional life — beyond kids, almost beyond marriage,” Brown said.
“Any time you have a woman in a play who speaks her mind, who seeks to define herself without a man defining her, it’s a feminist play,” she said. "'Grand Horizons' is a human play about a woman who’s speaking up. When women speak up, do they automatically get labeled feminist? I guess, perhaps, in many circles, they still do.”
“Grand Horizons” opens Thursday night with a pay-what-you-can preview. Shows run Aug. 31-Sept. 16 at Heartland Theatre, 1110 Douglas Street in Normal. Tickets are $17 at 309-452-8709 and heartlandtheatre.org.
