My Variety Review: Latest 'Apple Family' July Session on Zoom
After more than three months of home sequestering, the Apple familyis still hanging in there. But its resilience is ever-so-fragile and further frayed in “And So We Come Forth,” the latest up-to-date entry in Richard Nelson’s extraordinary, intimate saga.
For its second live-streamed session — again making the case for this fresh expression of art-making — Nelson’s homegrown panorama explores new ground as the coronavirus pandemic further takes its toll on this middle-class, well-educated family living in Rhinebeck, N.Y. But it goes beyond the initial shock and confusion of physical estrangement in their everyday lives, reflecting on a deepening sense of change that challenges the fundamentals of a family — and a nation.
These characters — which Nelson first depicted in his four-play Apple series, presented at New York’s Public Theater from 2010 to 2013 — have always mirrored, in minute and indirect ways, the changing world beyond their safe haven in the Hudson Valley. But this time, outside dynamics loom even larger as the four adult siblings share a virtual family dinner where, if you listen carefully, you can hear the rumbling of a not-too-distant, seismic societal shift.
The siblings are joined on-line by the partner of one of them who is visiting his daughter in Brooklyn for a socially distanced graduation party. But it’s a generational distance that is adding to the Apples’ sense of unease, if not dread, as they see their children and students moving away from them in ways they never imagined.
Once again, Nelson, who also directed his brilliant ensemble of actors, begins the Zoom call with small talk about take-out food real estate. But things are even more tense than the last session during the early weeks of the pandemic.