PRESS
WNYC
review: grappling with a post-covid life, around a dinner table
September 12, 2021
Richard Nelson's final play in his 12-play Rhinebeck series is a wake for a dance superstar — and all the large and small losses that have accrued during the pandemic. It's called "What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad." And WNYC arts editor Jennifer Vanasco told host David Furst that because these plays are a series of conversations, there's no need to have seen the others. "This one, this final show, is particularly beautiful," she said. "It's basically a wake for one of the characters. But it's also a moment to reflect on the losses so many of us have experienced in the past pandemic months - of friends, of careers, of a way of life, really."
the new york times
Review: In ‘What Happened?,’ a Questioning Farewell to Rhinebeck
September 9, 2021
Kate, a woman in her late 60s, sits alone at a weather-beaten table, the clutter of a cauliflower lasagna mostly cleared and her dinner companions now out for the evening. Together, they have spent most of the last two hours talking about Rose, Kate’s wife, who six months earlier, while dying of ovarian cancer, was killed by Covid-19 instead. After all that reminiscing, letter-reading and even dancing — Rose was a modern dance choreographer — what does Kate do?
the washington post
Playwright Richard Nelson ends his epic cycle of hyper-realistic drama with — what else? — a global pandemic
September 9, 2021
Over the course of a dozen plays, Richard Nelson has been dishing out current and family affairs, across chummy dinner tables and elegiac Zoom calls. His epic cycle began with "That Hopey Changey Thing" way back on election night 2010, in the heady heyday of the Obama administration. It ends now in the mournful uncertainties of "What Happened? The Michaels Abroad," set on Sept. 8, 2021, the 18th month of a global pandemic.
theater mania
review: in pandemic-inspired what happened?, richard nelson asks the same questions we all are
September 9, 2021
"My first trip back into the city, I thought it would feel strange," she says. "What surprised me is that it felt normal. And suddenly everything that'd come before – all of it – felt like a dream." Simple words, yet in a not-quite-post-pandemic world of returning to the theater, it's an oddly profound statement. It comes midway through Richard Nelson's elegiac play What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad, running through October 8 at Hunter College's Frederick Loewe Theatre, and it underscores what we're all thinking now as we once again resume sitting knee to knee with strangers in the dark, masked and vaccinated, and reflecting on what the heck we were just fortunate enough to survive.