A Good Smoke---After

My agent said something about A Good Smoke.

“It’s not a comedy. It’s painfully funny.”

Well said.

I want to thank my tens of blog readers at www.opentrench.blogspot.com and friends, (Facebook and otherwise) who remained curious about “The event”—there has been the desire to know, “How did the reading go?”

The answer is---it was quite something. To have Henry and Grace and Meryl and Debra and John and Paul up there…doing this thing, after just three hours of rehearsal, and to really get the bone of it, was really something else.

Debra Monk was a riot, at performance level. This is a truly supporting role, and she was hilarious, fully in there.

John and Paul, Dad and brother, had the least showy roles and came in, with full understanding. Pure pleasure to watch them.

The main event was Henry Wolfe Gummer and Grace Gummer as brother and sister with their mom played by their real mom, Meryl Streep. Henry and Grace are both naturals. Fantastic to watch. Truthful. Vulnerable. Connected. Real. And funny. Meryl tackled this big, hard part, never pushing once, always finding the comedy, poking around to discover a take, a tactic, a strange corner of her psyche. Born comedienne. Funny, sad and more--

It sounds like I’m giving a review of my own play, which is kind of weird. So…I’ll leave it alone at this point.

I was very grateful. I felt calm and happy. The response was strong. More ahead.

I did not want to blog about the reading, thinking it might be tacky to do so. But to not blog about it would have been a mock-hip omission.

Solid Response.

So, let's get back to our lives.

Work. Good work. Always work.