Hampton Theatre Company Stages 'Dead Accounts' in Quogue
Dead Accounts, Theresa Rebeck’s darkly comic take on the chasm that divides Americans in the Midwest from their countrymen living in New York, will be the second play of the Hampton Theatre Company’s 2015-2016 season, opening on January 14 at the Quogue Community Hall and running through January 31.
Dead Accounts tells the story of Jack Leonard, a native son of Cincinnati who returns unexpectedly after a brief career in high finance in New York, and his sister Lorna, who is now living at home and helping their mother, Barbara, take care of their ailing father. The homecoming is rendered more fraught by questions about what has become of Jack’s wife and how he managed to become an overnight millionaire.
As much as the play examines the different values of the heartland and the East Coast, it is also very timely in its focus on the challenges of trying to live in the ever-widening gap between the middle class and the 1 percent.
Calling the 2012 Broadway production “an exceedingly interesting night at the theater” in which “the laughs don’t stop,” Terry Teachout described Dead Accounts in The Wall Street Journal as “a dead-serious comedy about what happens to people who, like Jack and Lorna, wake up one morning and realize that their lives haven’t lived up to their dreams.”
The cast of Dead Accounts features four Hampton Theatre Company veterans and one newcomer, Mary McGloin, in the role of Lorna. Playing Jack is John Carlin, who made his debut with Hampton Theatre Company last winter in Time Stands Still. Barbara is played by Hampton Theatre Company Artistic Director Diana Marbury, last seen on the stage in last spring’s Hay Fever.
Rebecca Edana, last seen in Quogue in last season’s Clybourne Park, has the role of Jenny, Jack’s wife. Peter Connolly, who appeared in the company’s 2010 revival of Bedroom Farce, plays Jack’s high school friend Phil.
Rebeck—who was born in Kenwood, Ohio, and went to high school in Cincinnati—is a playwright, television writer and novelist. In addition to Dead Accounts, New York productions of her plays include: Seminar, Mauritius, The Understudy, The Scene, The Butterfly Collection, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels, among others. Hampton Theatre Company staged Mauritius in 2010. Rebeck’s play Omnium Gatherum, co-written with Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003.
For television, she has written for shows ranging from Smash, which she created, to Law & Order: Criminal Intent, L.A. Law, Dream On and NYPD Blue, for which she won a Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award and a Writers Guild of America Award, along with other honors. Rebeck co-wrote the films Harriet the Spy and Gossip
Andrew Botsford directs. Set design is by Peter-Tolin Baker, lighting design is by Sebastian Paczynski and costumes are by Teresa Lebrun.
Showtimes are Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. from January 14 through 31. There will be a talkback with the actors and director following the Thursday, January 21, performance.
Tickets ($30 general admission, $25 seniors, $10 under 21) may be purchased in advance online at hamptontheatre.org or by calling 866-811-4111. Tickets may also be purchased at the box office before curtain time at Quogue Community Hall, 125 Jessup Avenue, Quogue.