This was all rather tame for a play that could have had so much more dramatic tension: the most controversial thing that happens is that a young couple have had a baby out of wedlock. I suppose it is commendable that the show never goes anywhere near becoming a soap opera on stage – shouting is minimal, and civility between the characters, however heated their conversations become, is refreshingly relentless. These may not have been likeable people, and they sometimes said things that drew gasps from certain members of the press night audience. It’s not that they don’t know how to behave in a public place, but rather that they are behind closed doors here, so the play, it seems, wants to provide an insight of sorts into what they ‘really’ think.
The set is suitably impressive for a well to do family, even if it becomes clear that certain people subsidise others. In Act One, Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) is busy preparing a Christmas meal. She’s married to Ben (Daniel Abelson) and they have two children, Scotty (Alexander Marks), a university student – or, as they say in the United States, a college student – and Timmy, a primary school pupil, or elementary school student, a role shared by Rex Bamber and Maxwell Rich. Scotty has brought a college friend, Jeff (Sam Marks). Further, there is Ben’s sister Faye (Tracy-Ann Oberman), Faye’s husband Mort (David Kennedy) and their daughter Shelley (Julia Kass). Neither Mort nor Shelley have much stage time, though I got the impression Shelley was meant to be one of those stereotypically moody teenagers.
By rights, perhaps, this ought to have been more than enough bodies for sparks to fly, skeletons to come out of cupboards, an almighty showdown of sorts and simmering disagreements that have been going on for years if not decades to explode into a cathartic release. Instead, there’s a lot of exposition in the first half, and one hoped for something noteworthy to happen in the second. Well, I found the second half easier to sit through than the first. It’s fine, at least in my book, to not have a story neatly wrapped up by the curtain call. But The Assembled Parties goes too far the other way – there are so many narrative strands left hanging that, quite frankly, it was difficult to care very much about what might have transpired afterwards.
A brief foray into how terrible the ‘new’ president is (a reference to the ‘Dubya’ Bush Administration, as it turns out) was so surface level it might as well have been excised altogether without consequence. Overall, though, there is some charm to be appreciated and some light humour to be savoured. I have no issues with the casting – but it would have been nice to have had a complete story rather than one with missing pieces.
Review by Chris Omaweng
“You would love the apartment – it’s like the sets of those plays you love, with the breezy dialogue. They sort of talk that way and everybody’s unbelievably nice and, like, gracious and happy. It’s like you go to New York and you look for New York but it isn’t there? But it’s here…”
Former movie star Julie Bascov insists on taking Christmas seriously – despite her family’s reminders that they are in fact Jewish. Every year, she and her impossibly well-heeled husband Ben host a feast in their palatial apartment on Central Park West. In December 1980, their son and his best friend Jeff come down from Harvard to join the party, and Jeff is dazzled by the Bascov clan. But when he returns for the same occasion twenty years later he finds that much that was sown in 1980 has been reaped in the intervening years…
CAST
Ben – Daniel Abelson
Shelley – Julia Kass
Mort – David Kennedy
Scotty/Tim – Alexander Marks
Jeff – Sam Marks
Faye – Tracy-Ann Oberman MBE
Julie – Jennifer Westfeldt
Hector – Francisco Labbe
Timmy – Rex Bamber/Maxwell Rich
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer – Richard Greenberg
Director – Blanche McIntyre
Designer – James Cotterill
Lighting Designer – Malcolm Rippeth
Sound Designer – John Leonard
Dialect Coach – Aundrea Fudge
Casting Director – Anna Cooper CDF
US Casting Director – Jim Carnahan CSA
Assistant Director – Vicky Moran
THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES
Hampstead Theatre
17 October to 22 November 2025
