APPLAUSE!

“Thanks for a wonderful play! Yeah, I'm pre-geezer, so I'm biased, but I loved it!.” Ben Roech

“The script is fraught with wordplay and texture, and it pulls the veil off the couples and their lives with just the right pacing and panache.” – Kilian Melloy

“A wildly entertaining romp about later middle age, the part of life Ronan refers to as the ‘pre-geezer years.’” – Terry Doyle

The Yeats Game

Starring (l. to r.):

Toby Wherry, Jennifer Silverstein, Lucius Wall, Susan Stout

The Run

The Yeats Game closed March 25 in New York, after great word-of-mouth, running to ¾ capacity for the month. As in Boston, New York reviews were mixed. Of the New York production, Ben Roech wrote: “This play is pretty big. There is so much in this story that something really special could be done with all of it, and with not much modification - a bigger venue, but better would be a movie.” Even twenty-somethings, who had trouble sympathizing with the pre-geezer themes, singled out items for praise: the music (designed and composed by Tim Dahl and David Buddin), the wit, the acting, and the surprise ending.

[If you saw the play, please don’t reveal the close!]

What’s Next

John Ronan, the play’s author, said in an interview that he wanted to plunge into re-write, workshopping a fresh script later in the year with the same talented cast. “This play is very close. We had some excellent feedback from critics and audience, especially during a talk-back with a university group.” This was the comedy’s third production, after a Gloucester, MA, premiere, and a run at Boston University’s Playwright’s Theater. “The play keeps getting stronger,” Ronan added. “As they say in New York, ‘a script is always in development.’ We’ll be back soon. ”

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The Yeats Game is a farce about middle-age choices and their ridiculous consequences. At a funeral, as two frisky couples contemplate a friend’s fatal, love-nest heart attack, they flash back to their own recent snowed-in weekend at a mountain cabin. There, a board game designed for age-hating Boomers leads to tangled romance as the old friends explore love, lust, marriage and mischief. Just as guilt prompts confession, and all things point to reform, maturity and reluctant virtue, the play’s close tells us that virtue is a weak motivator, immaturity has its advantages - and that the corpse is perhaps not so dead.

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New Comedy by John Ronan

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Contact: comedy@theyeatsgame.org

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