Richard Nelson Hosts Another Apple Family Dinner

by Andrea Libresco

On Midterm Election night, a Public Theater audience shared the anticipation of the play’s opening line: “It’s Choosing Day.”

Barbara (Maryann Plunkett), the eldest Apple sister, a retiring English teacher, points out Walt Whitman’s poem “Election Day, November 1884,” which she later recites with feeling.

Whitman asserts that America’s “powerfulest scene” emerges from “the still small voice vibrating” when we cast our ballots, certainly borne out by our 2026 Blue Tsunami.

Like other plays in the Rhinebeck series, Nelson sets the action at the Apple family’s familiar wooden dining table up in the Hudson Valley. They share a meal on a notable night, Tuesday, November 3, 2026.  We are comfortably eavesdropping on their discussions about life and elections.

The Apple family members, played by five top-notch actors, adhere to a pact not to look at their phones or to utter the president’s name. They agree to concentrate on their own familial bonds. Nevertheless, personal stories cannot keep out the flash points of this election:

Barbara’s adult ESL student gets picked up by ICE.

Her sister Marian (Laila Robins) succumbs to high property taxes and is forced to sell her home. Adding insult to injury, the buyers flip it for high profit.

Youngest sister Jane (Sally Murphy) can no longer afford rent in New York City.

Brother Richard (Jay O. Sanders) recounts his embarrassment on a recent trip as an American abroad. His partner, Yvonne (Yvonne Woods), battles cancer in America’s diseased health care system.

The anguish of being American in an America they no longer recognize is palpable.

The lyrics from a folk song the sisters sing reflect their anguish: “And when you return to the land of your birth / There’ll be no one to welcome you home.” The words call to mind deportations, of course. But they also resonate as the family’s profound alienation from the country they have loved. Indeed, one sister reveals that she could not even face voting.

“So, it’ll get better after tonight?” echoes around the table. The reply, “We’ll See,” the play’s title, reflects the family’s uncertainty—and our own.

Family members share remedies for a decade’s worth of callousness and cruelty:

Attend community plays.

Write.

Put this hope-killing decade in context by recalling what our grandparents lived through.

“Work through the violence and noise and find something beautiful.”

“Above all, pay attention and listen to what lies between words.”

Glad to see the arts, historical context, and listening on the Apples’ list of survival strategies in our troubled democracy. Just wish they would have included collective action.

I left the theater, arriving home in time to catch Texas Senator-Elect James Talarico’s victory speech: “We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been ten years of this kind of politics. . . . People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love.”

Just what the Apple family is discussing around their table.  Join them for dinner.

 

“We’ll See” –written & directed by Richard Nelson, scenic design by Jason Ardizzone-West, costumes by Susan Hilferty, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, and sound by Scott Lehrer, at The Public Theater, New York.

Info: publictheater.org – to November 29, 2026.

Cast: Sally Murphy, Maryann Plunkett, Laila Robins, Jay O. Sanders, and Yvonne Woods.

Banner photo: Jay O. Sanders, Sally Murphy, Laila Robins, and Maryann Plunkett. Photos by Joan Marcus