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The belated coming of Kenneth Lonergan to Broadway is one of the best things to happen to theater in America in the past decade. For even though Mr. Lonergan is the finest American playwright of his generation, his work has never been as widely known—or frequently staged—as it should be. As a result, the revivals of “This Is Our Youth” (1996), “Lobby Hero” (2002) and “The Waverly Gallery” (1999) that came to Broadway in 2014, 2018 and last fall have brought him to the attention of theatergoers who were hitherto unfamiliar with his subtle, richly wrought studies of messy lives and moral choices. That said, it’s also true that Mr. Lonergan’s plays were all originally written for performance in off-Broadway theaters, and while they can be effectively mounted in larger houses, as Lila Neugebauer proved with “The Waverly Gallery,” they work best when seen in more intimate spaces.
Witness Shakespeare & Company’s exceptional new revival of “The Waverly Gallery,” which is being performed in that company’s 200-seat Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre in a production staged by Tina Packer, the company’s founder, and starring Annette Miller in the role that won Elaine May a well-deserved Tony two weeks ago. Like Ms. May, Ms. Miller is an octogenarian at the peak of her powers…
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