Somewhere Fun

by Jenny Schwartz

Rosemary and Evelyn met "a hundred thousand years ago" in Central Park when their children were barely born. Somewhere Fun reunites the two women thirty-five years later on Madison Avenue one windy fall day. With their children now grown and the world changing rapidly before (what's left of) their eyes, each finds herself face to face with the terrors, joys, and surprises of life and time. Somewhere Fun is a wildly original story about connection—to our families, our memories, our moment in time.

Jenny Schwartz's plays include God's Ear, Somewhere Fun, and Cause for Alarm. Somewhere Fun will receive its world premiere at the Vineyard Theatre in the spring of 2013, directed by Anne Kauffman. God's Ear was produced in New York by New Georges and the Vineyard Theatre, also directed by Anne Kauffman. God's Ear has been produced nationally and internationally from Lisbon, Portugal, to Boise, Idaho, to Sydney, Australia. Schwartz is the 2012 recipient of the Frederick Loewe Award for Musical Theatre for the development of her musical Iowa, which she is writing with composer Todd Almond. Almond and Schwartz recently developed Iowa at Sundance/MassMoCA under the direction of Ken Rus Schmoll. Schmoll also directed her play Cause for Alarm at the New York International Fringe Festival way back when. Other awards and honors include the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Benjamin H. Danks Award in Drama, a Kesselring honor, two grants from Lincoln Center's Lecomte du Nuoy Foundation, and Soho Rep's Dorothy Streslin Playwriting Fellowship. This is her second season co-chairing the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab with Schmoll. Schwartz received an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University, is a graduate of Juilliard's playwriting program, and a member of New Dramatists.

Genres: Drama, Plays

184 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 2013

About the author

Jenny Schwartz's play God’s Ear was produced off-off Broadway in May 2007 and moved off-Broadway in April 2008. Two of Jenny's plays, Intervals and Cause for Alarm, were part of the New York Fringe Festival, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. She is the recipient of a grant from the Lincoln Center Lecomte du Nuoy Foundation and is the 2007-2008 recipient of the Dorothy Stresling Foundation Fellowship at Soho Rep. Jenny completed two years of fellowship in the Playwriting Program at the Julliard School and holds an MFA in theater directing from Columbia University.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5, rounded down.

I enjoyed Schwartz's first play, God's Ear: A Play, and this is in a similar vein - but is twice as long, almost three hours, and absurdism is just not sustainable for that long, I'm afraid. The play is dedicated to Edward Albee, and is modeled after, or perhaps an homage to, his early plays The Sandbox and The American Dream - and there is a reason those are both fairly short one-acts.

Portions of this are dazzling, but about halfway through the second (of three!) acts, I was ready for it to be over, and struggled to finish it. Isherwood is spot-on in his NYT pan (below). I could see Elaine Stritch going to town playing Rosemary, however - or perhaps Bea Arthur - and her fellow Golden Girl Estelle Getty as Evelyn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/th...
https://variety.com/2013/legit/review...

[Marsha Valance · Rating 4 out of 5]

An absorbing play about 2 New York women, friends for half a century, who meet on the street and contemplate the directions their lives and families have taken.