What ‘Epiphany’ Awaits at This New Lincoln Center Theater Play?
Playwrights
Playwright Brian Watkins and director Tyne Rafaeli on their haunting new drama inspired by James Joyce’s The Dead
—
In Brian Watkins’ eerie new play Epiphany, a houseful of party guests are on pins and needles waiting for the final attendee to show up—after all, he’s the one who has promised to explain the reason for the gathering. Now running at Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the production is also late to arrive, delayed by two years due to COVID-19. For director Tyne Rafaeli, the wait has only sharpened the drama’s critique of our disconnected postmodern world. “Even in a pre-pandemic environment, the play’s conversations about our need to gather and our need for ritual felt so deeply pertinent,” Rafaeli says. “Brian was pointing to things in how we were living that then became so acute and undeniable during the pandemic.”
Set in a grand old house outside of a large unnamed city, Epiphany takes place over the course of one snowy night as the grandmotherly Morkan (NYC stage legend Marylouise Burke) welcomes affectionate but bewildered friends and family to a get-together that she hopes will be the start of a new (or is that old?) annual tradition. She insists that they give up their cell phones for the evening and has prepared an absurdly large, old-fashioned dinner. But where in the world is her nephew, Gabriel, the event’s cohost?
Although Watkins has jettisoned the Dublin setting of Joyce’s work, it was the union of locale and story that initially intrigued him. “I was actually in Dublin, and I was listening to the story on a loop,” he says. “Then I came back to New York, and ‘The Dead’ was sort of haunting my mind.” He quickly put his obsession to practical use, penning a play that, like Joyce’s story, explores the concept of epiphany (though, like many Americans, the dramatist was initially unfamiliar with the story’s Catholic context). “At the time I was a playwriting fellow at Juilliard,” Watkins says. “I had a play due, and that became Epiphany.”
Good things come to those who wait, however painful the reason for the holdup. That certainly seems to have been the case for Watkins: He used the pandemic pause to write and produce the series Outer Range, a sci-fi Western drama starring Josh Brolin that’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime. “I really like to have the triangle of film, TV and theatre happening all at once at different stages,” he says. “One form really sharpens another, or at least can give me perspective that can be useful. I think there’s actually a lot in Outer Range that is present in Epiphany in different ways,” including Watkins’ signature brand of “existential dread and absurdist humor.” For now, he’s enjoying being back in the theatre. “There’s nothing like live performance,” he says. “The fact that it’s written in water makes it sort of beautiful and sacred”—just like a circle of friends gathering on a stormy winter’s night.
—
TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for Epiphany . Go here to browse all theatre, dance and music offers.
Regina Robbins is a writer, director, native New Yorker and Jeopardy! champion. She has worked with several NYC-based theatre companies and is currently a Core Company Member with Everyday Inferno Theatre.
Top image: Marylouise Burke, Omar Metwally and David Ryan Smith in Epiphany at Lincoln Center Theater. Photo by Jeremy Daniel.
Regina Robbins is a writer, director, native New Yorker and Jeopardy! champion. She has worked with several NYC-based theatre companies and is currently a Core Company Member with Everyday Inferno Theatre.