--The basic facts of the script
"Regrets Only"
Paul Rudnick
English
2007
Comedy, Satire, Farce/50 Pages/2 Acts
Dramatists
Royalty Fee(s): 75 Dollars per performance
Cast Breakdown: 2 Men, 4 Women
Time and Setting: New york, Ny, (Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side Manhatthan), The Present
--An introduction to the plot and its characters
About The Show:
The plot is set in the motion one momentous evening in a lavish Upper East Side apartment. Socialite Tibby McCullough is preparing to go out with her best friend, legendary gay designer Hank Hadley, whose companion of nearly 40 years has recently died. Tibby's daughter Spencer, an ambitious lawyer, comes home and announces her engagement; minutes later, her father Jack, a wildly rich, liberal New York lawyer, gets a call from the President of the United States to help craft a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage. When Tibby and Spencer support Jack's decision to go to Washington, Hank decides to take action -- in a very unusual way.
The play is a miraculous marriage of caricature and character. Rudnick has managed to create six comically extreme people -- including Myra, the McCullough's Jewish maid, and Tibby's shallow mother, Marietta -- who also exhibit genuine human emotions. While the quips fly fast and furiously, Rudnick so effectively plots the piece that the jokes serve a thematic point. Tibby, who's essentially a silly society wife, is eventually given stature. Jack is humbled but not broken; rather, he is educated. Even Spencer and Marietta have their epiphanies.
Rudnick has written a smart play with a several rich conflicts waiting to explode. The only question for the audience is whether he will find a way to tie all of his points and plot strands together before the final blackout -- and the answer is a resounding yes. His major plot twist is no more realistic than his comically overdrawn characters, but that's the brilliance of the piece; the characters and the plot are in perfect balance.
Cast:
Mrya Kesselman- Female, 45-55, white, Jewish. The maid of the McCullough family, has been employed by the family for years.
Hank Hadley- Male, 50-60, white. Famous fashion designer, Tibby's best friend.
Tibby McCullough- Female, 50-60, white. Wife of Jack, Mother of Spencer. Best friend of Hank
Jack McCullough-Male, 50-60, white. Husband of Tibby, Father of Spencer. High powered lawyer in New York.
Spencer McCullough- 25-27, white. Daughter of Tibby and Jack. She is a lawyer. She is getting married.
Marietta Claypoole-70-80, White. Mother of Tibby and Grandmother of Spencer. She is a rich woman.
--An introduction to the author
Brief Bio of Author-
PAUL RUDNICK (Playwright) plays have been produced both on and off Broadway and around the world. Currently his play The New Century is being staged at Lincoln Center Theatre and his most recent work before was Regrets Only at Manhattan Theatre Club, starring Christine Baranski and George Grizzard. His other plays include Valhalla, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, I Hate Hamlet and Jeffrey, for which he won an Obie, an Outer Critics Circle Award and the John Gassner Playwrighting Award. His novels are Social Disease and I'll Take It, both published by Knopf. His articles and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. His is rumored to be quite close to Premiere Magazine's film critic, Libby Gelman-Waxner, whose collected columns have been published under the title If You Ask Me. His screenplays include Addams Family Values, the screen adaptation of Jeffrey and In & Out.
--A brief production history with excerpts from reviews
Have a Play Full of Zingers? You Know Whom to Cast
By BEN BRANTLEY
New York Times
Published: November 20, 2006
The temptation for anyone writing about “Regrets Only,” which doubles as a comedy of Park Avenue manners and (far less persuasively) a tract on gay marriage, is to quote as many of those one-liners as space allows and then to try to describe just how Ms. Baranski delivers them.
But if I did that, there wouldn’t be much incentive for thrifty readers to attend this production, would there? They would be able to enliven cocktail parties by reciting Mr. Rudnick’s best jokes without having paid to see “Regrets Only.” And the Manhattan Theater Club, having gotten off to a rocky start this season with the reviled “Losing Louie” on Broadway, could use a hit comedy.
Hank is a wildly successful, gentlemanly designer with a passing resemblance to a real designer who was also wildly successful and gentlemanly and had an alliterative name: Bill Blass, who died in 2002. (Having known Mr. Blass, I can say with some authority that the parallels, like much of “Regrets Only,” are strictly on the surface.)
A hitherto apolitical animal, Hank — whose lover of many years died only months before the play begins — finds himself stirred to righteousness when a member of his intimate social set, a big-time lawyer named Jack McCullough (David Rasche), agrees to consult with President Bush on the drafting of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
What makes the situation especially thorny is that Jack is married to Hank’s closest confidante, Tibby, a professional partygoer and perfectly groomed clotheshorse. (The alarmingly productive William Ivey Long did the sociologically accurate costumes.) Tibby is played by Ms. Baranski, in a long-overdue return to the New York stage.
Anyway, Jack’s involvement with this proposed amendment forces Hank and Tibby to rethink what defines a marriage and, for that matter, a friendship.
Others join the debate: Myra (Jackie Hoffman), the McCulloughs’ madcap maid, who keeps interjecting her opinions in different foreign accents, with accessories to match; Marietta Claypoole (a regally funny Sian Phillips), Tibby’s madcap, much-married mother; and Spencer (Diane Davis), Tibby and Jack’s only mildly madcap daughter, who is about to be married for the first time.
Much madcap merriment — but with a message — ensues when Hank decides to prove that it’s gay people who make the McCulloughs’ world go round. Though Hank’s means of making his point have already been disclosed in advance feature articles in magazines and newspapers (including this one), I am not going to describe it. That would spoil the minimal surprise of the high concept (well, knee-high concept) that shapes the second act.
But too often “Regrets Only” has the unconvincing air of someone yelling, “Save the geese!” while feasting on foie gras. And when people aren’t merely being witty, the play sags.
As accomplished as the cast is, only Ms. Baranski strides the divide between comic intoxication and emotional sobriety. As she proved on the sitcom “Cybill,” she is a master of the deflating putdown. But as in her earlier stage work, she finds the complexity beneath her character’s ostensible silliness.
Tibby’s shiny stylishness never quite conceals the abiding lack of confidence of a girl who grew up with an overpowering, luxury-addicted mother. (When she was anorexic, she says, her mother told her: “Good for you! Keep going!” Yes, I know I promised not to do that. I’m sorry.)
Anyone who has spent time in Park Avenue dining rooms will probably have met someone much like Tibby, as Ms. Baranski portrays her: a woman who, despite a life devoted principally to clothes and menus, is too smart, too damaged and too valiant to be dismissed.
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/theater/reviews/20regr.html
Classroom Exercise (University only)
A list of basic legal facts that come with being married in America.
A list of social changes in America since President Bush has been elected.
Why do we think this is important?
5 Questions for the classroom.
What did you think after viewing this production?
What do you think of gay marriage?
What do you think of the current goverment in America?
Do you think gay marriage would hurt American Society?
How would America change if gay marriage was allowed?
