Fifty Words Stages a Domestic Dispute

Have you ever wondered what your parents were up to while you were away at sleepovers? If you haven’t even considered the thought, lest it involve disturbing images of blindfolds and whips, consider your parents among the fortunate ones. Because often, in those rare moments of calm between washing crayon off the wall and picking alphabet macaroni out of the shag carpet, Mommy and Daddy had too much vino and started scrutinizing their own failed relationship.

Academy Award nominee Michael Weller’s play Fifty Words, which opens this weekend at GableStage, follows one such marriage on the verge of falling apart. The couple lives in an idyllic brownstone in an idyllic Brooklyn neighborhood, and they  probably attend every PTA meeting with organic cookies in hand. But one night, when their nine-year old son is away on his first sleepover, the curtain is raised on their façade, and not all is so shiny and perfect.

“During that one night we witness and learn almost everything about

their marriage — the good, the bad and the ugly,” says director Joseph

Adler. “[The play] says, in less than two hours, more about the

difficulties involved in keeping relationships alive than you can get in

months of couples therapy.”

We imagine, based on the stills of a menacing Adam (played by Gregg

Weiner, winner of a Best Supporting Actor Carbonell for his work in

Farragut North), and an enraged Jan (performed by Erin Joy Schmidt, who

received critical praise for her role in Neil LaBute’s Reasons to Be

Pretty), that the ugly involves a battle with demons of epic

proportions. In a stellar line of dialogue from the play, Jan declares,

“It’s a stupid word, love … There should be 50 words for it, like Eskimos

have for snow.” She’d probably like “hate” to be one of them.  

Fifty Words will be presented at GableStage at the Biltmore (1200

gablestage.org.