A Playwright-Director Completes His Election-Year Trilogy

Clyde Fitch Report: In much the same way that Anton Chekhov established himself as the literary archivist of late-19th and early-20th-century Russia, playwright-director Richard Nelson has completed an achievement easily remarkable enough to establish him as a chronicler of our own era. On Election Night 2016, his Women of a Certain Age opened at The Public Theater in New York, concluding a trilogy — which began with Hungry and What Did You Expect? — about a middle-class Rhinebeck, NY family. With these plays, Nelson beautifully illustrates how one particular American family stratum lives in our day and age.