Brooklyn Boy is a play by American playwright Donald Margulies. The play premiered in 2004 at South Coast Repertory and then on Broadway in 2005.
Novelist Eric Weiss, critically celebrated but unsuccessful, "arrives" when his new, autobiographical novel becomes a best-seller. An outsider all his life, he is suddenly on the inside of everything: town cars, television studios, the Sunday book review. But as his career takes off, his personal life stutters.
His father lies ill in Maimonides Hospital, Jewish Brooklyn's version of the river Styx, wondering when Eric will produce his first grandchild. His former friends and neighbors in Brooklyn celebrate his success while simultaneously being suspicious about his attitude toward them–in life and in his novel. And his success, rather than oiling the waters of his marriage, troubles them for him and his writer-wife.
Brooklyn Boy is Margulies' first work for the stage since winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with his Dinner with Friends . Tony Award-winning director Daniel Sullivan, who directed South Coast Repertory's production of Dinner with Friends returned to South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California, to direct the world premiere of Brooklyn Boy. This was a co-production by South Coast Repertory and the Manhattan Theatre Club, and was commissioned by SCR and developed at the company's 2003 Pacific Playwrights Festival. The play ran from September 10, 2004, to October 10, 2004. [1] The cast starred Adam Arkin as Eric Weiss; Allan Miller as his father Manny; and Dana Reeve as his wife Nina. Arye Gross and Ari Graynor also appeared. [2] [3]
The play premiered on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on January 13, 2005, in previews and officially on February 3, 2005, [4] and closed on March 27, 2005, after 62 performances and 23 previews. The SCR cast reprised their roles, except that Polly Draper took the role of Nina. Adam Arkin was nominated for the 2005 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Actor in a Play. [5] The play was nominated for the 2005 Outer Critics Circle Award, Outstanding New Broadway Play.
Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times , wrote: "...has the courage to confront head-on the predictability of the midlife crisis it portrays....Brookyn Boy, smoothly directed by Daniel Sullivan and acted with fine-grained conviction by a cast led by Adam Arkin, may indeed be Mr. Margulies's most personally heartfelt work. But while this comic drama is steeped in an admirably humble and often touching spirit of acceptance, it seldom does what first-rate plays must do and what Mr. Margulies has achieved repeatedly before: it does not make the familiar seem fresh.". [6]
Donald Margulies is an American playwright and academic. In 2000, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Dinner with Friends.
Adam Arkin is an American actor and director. He is known for playing the role of Aaron Shutt on Chicago Hope. He has been nominated for numerous awards, including a Tony as well as three primetime Emmys, four SAG Awards, and a DGA Award. In 2002, Arkin won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Children's Special for My Louisiana Sky. He is also one of the three actors to portray Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck on Monk. Between 2007 and 2009, he starred in Life. Beginning in 1990, he had a recurring guest role on Northern Exposure playing the angry, paranoid Adam, for which he received an Emmy nomination. In 2009, he portrayed villain Ethan Zobelle, a white separatist gang leader, in Sons of Anarchy and as Principal Ed Gibb in 8 Simple Rules (2003–2005). His brother Matthew is also an actor, as was his father Alan Arkin.
Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. His play The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named Best Play on Broadway by USA Today, and best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. His play The Open House was presented Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2014 and won the Obie Award for Playwriting as well as other awards, and was on both TIME Magazine and Time Out New York 's Top Ten Plays of 2014.
Richard Greenberg is an American playwright and television writer known for his subversively humorous depictions of middle-class American life. He has had more than 25 plays premiere on and Off-Broadway in New York City and eight at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, California, including The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, and Hurrah at Last.
Arye Gross is an American actor, who has appeared on a variety of television shows in numerous roles, most notably Adam Greene in the ABC sitcom Ellen.
Celia Keenan-Bolger is an American actress and singer. She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for portraying Scout Finch in the play To Kill a Mockingbird (2018). She has also been Tony-nominated for her roles in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005), Peter and the Starcatcher (2012), The Glass Menagerie (2014), and Mother Play (2024).
Amy Freed is an American playwright. Her play Freedomland was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
South Coast Repertory (SCR) is a professional theatre company located in Costa Mesa, California.
Daniel John Sullivan is an American theatre and film director and playwright.
Richard John Nelson is an American playwright and librettist. He wrote the book for the 2000 Broadway musical James Joyce's The Dead, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical, as well as the book for the 1988 Broadway production of Chess. He is also the writer of the critically acclaimed play cycle The Rhinebeck Panorama.
Dinner with Friends is a play written by Donald Margulies. It premiered at the 1998 Humana Festival of New American Plays and opened Off-Broadway in 1999. The play received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Matthew Arkin is an American actor, acting instructor, and author.
Peter Friedman is an American stage, film, and television actor. He made his Broadway debut in the Eugene O'Neill play The Great God Brown in 1972. His other Broadway credits include roles in The Rules of the Game (1974), Piaf (1981), The Heidi Chronicles (1989), and Twelve Angry Men (2004). He earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical nomination for his role as Tateh in Ragtime (1998).
Sight Unseen is a play by Donald Margulies. The play premiered at South Coast Repertory in 1991, and then was produced Off-Broadway in 1992 and on Broadway in 2004.
Collected Stories is a play by Donald Margulies which premiered at South Coast Repertory in 1996, and was presented on Broadway in 2010. The play was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1997.
Tribes is a play by English playwright Nina Raine that had its world premiere in 2010 at London's Royal Court Theatre and its North American premiere Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012. The play won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
Anne Kauffman is an American director known primarily for her work on new plays, mainly in the New York area. She is a founding member of the theater group the Civilians. She made her Broadway debut with the Scott McPherson play Marvin's Room (2017) and returned with the revival of the Lorraine Hansberry play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (2023) and Mary Jane (2024).
Jordan Harrison is an American playwright. He grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His play Marjorie Prime was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an American playwright. His plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His play Appropriate made his Broadway debut as a playwright in 2023 and earned him his first Tony Award. His additional plays include An Octoroon and The Comeuppance. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.