WE HAD A BALL
Manhattan Theatre Club’s We Had a World is an unconventional modern-day three-hander memory play that covers roughly 30 years. Our diarist, memoirist, and damn funny playwright Joshua Harmon is trying to make sense of a real-life senseless event at a Passover dinner, but what he creates–with himself as the protagonist Joshua (Andrew Barth Feldman)–is ultimately a love letter to people who navigate thorny familial relationships—assisted by a little Rashomon-style help from his mother, Ellen (Jeanine Serralles), and his Grandma Renee (Joanna Gleason).
Jeanine Serralles, Andrew Barth Feldman, Joanna Gleason
Remember the film Avalon in which Lou Jacobi arrives late for Thanksgiving, and leaves furious with “You cut the turkey without me?”–disassociating himself and his wife with family for 20 years? That kind of unforgiving, unresolved anger has occurred in my own family. In fact, if you look in the dictionary under the word “dysfunction,” you could see a picture of a New York, Jewish middle-class family.
Andrew Barth Feldman, Joanna Gleason
The action is kicked into motion at the top, when a dying Renee asks Joshua to write a play called Battle of the Titans about his mother and his Aunt Susan (whom we never meet but, oh, do we sense her). In the play he will write, We Had a World (a bewildering title), Harmon is not dissecting his family in a typical kitchen-sink drama (although some serious drama happens at a kitchen sink); instead, we’re hearing a writer rifling through the card catalog of the ghosts that haunt him.
Andrew Barth Feldman
I can only guess that putting it on paper—and then on the stage with thoughtful, considerate, and unobtrusive direction by Trip Cullman—is a way of exorcising ghosts, a vessel for releasing the pressure cooker of dysfunction, and an acknowledgement that, no matter how well we think we know our loved ones, they still manage to surprise us. His deep love for his grandmother is unmistakable—after all, this is a woman who took him to a Mapplethorpe exhibit when he was nine. But as secrets are revealed, and anger boils over, his remarkable play resists offering easy rationalization about their relationship.
Andrew Barth Feldman, Joanna Gleason
As he did with his Bad Jews and Prayer for the French Republic, Harmon once again explores family dynamics and our place within them Though rooted in a multigenerational Jewish family, Harmon has a gift for finding the universal in the specific. Indeed, one of the show’s sharpest joys is the trio’s commentary on each other’s quirks, such as speech patterns—British for Grandma, Bronx for Mom, and a patois of Valleyspeak for Joshua, typified by his overuse of the word “like.”
Joanna Gleason
Yes, it’s an autobiographical memory play, but much like Tennessee Williams (who practically launched the genre with The Glass Menagerie), Harmon fractures time, sprinkling events and conversations, sometimes out of chronological order. Yet, his style has a different rhythm—a fluidity that makes it seem effortless, a sign of brilliant playwrighting (I recognize our greatest playwrights when their work inspires me to go home and write a play, even though I’ve never written one before).
Joanna Gleason, Andrew Barth Feldman
The finest trio of actors Off-Broadway (or anywhere in NYC) certainly display the mannerisms given to them on paper, but they do it with astounding integrity and restraint—it is never in question that these people are very, very real.
At the center is Andrew Barth Feldman as Joshua, in what is easily the most captivating performance of the year so far. His kind of acting can’t be taught. He possesses a magically natural theatricality paired with the impeccable timing of a seasoned vaudevillian—a rare and thrilling combination.
Jeanine Serralles
As the Auntie Mame-esque Grandma Renee, the luminescent Joanna Gleason conveys time’s passage not with exaggerated voice or movement but with a sturdy, captivating presence. It’s the same stunning lucidity that won her a Tony as the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods—a performance that still lingers in theater lovers’ memories. At 74, Gleason, looking ridiculously young, is assisted by Tommy Kurzman‘s wig, a thick mane of gray hair which helps sell the age range.
Andrew Barth Feldman, Jeanine Serralles, Joanna Gleason
Renee and Joshua have a nonsexual Harold and Maude-esque love affair—one that instills our protagonist with the love of theatre—hence his desire to become a playwright. Jeanine Serralles as Ellen takes longer to earn our sympathy compared to Joshua and Grandma, whose bond is utterly delectable. Ellen, caught in the middle, undergoes searing emotional shifts to win our favor, and given that she isn’t written as the most likeable character, Serralles navigates this with remarkable depth.
Andrew Barth Feldman
As with every great memory play, there are no traditional walls—only the exposed brick of New York City Center’s intimate second space, transformed into a thrust stage. This marks its first produced work since COVID, and it’s a fittingly spare, evocative setting by John Lee Beatty. The design leans on the most essential artifacts: a writing table, a phonograph, Tupperware bowls. Kaye Voyce gives Grandma a representational designer wardrobe and Ellen gets brown, almost ill-fitting, business attire. Strangely, Joshua begins the play in his Tighty Whities at home. Is this how Harmon writes in real life? Or is it foreshadowing the raw, naked truth to come? Either way, it’s a bit of eye candy.
Like Harmon’s Skintight, We Had a World is by turns cruel, tender, and hilarious. This is a serious comedy, so when it’s humorous, it absolutely soars. When it shifts to heavier moments, the energy dips just slightly, but that’s a small price to pay for such an engrossing, beautifully wrought evening of theater.
Andrew Barth Feldman, Joanna Gleason
photos by Jeremy Daniel
We Had a World
Manhattan Theatre Club
NY City Center Stage II, 131 West 55th St.
ends on April 27, 2025 EXTENDED to May 11, 2025
for tickets, call 212.581.1212 or visit NY City Center and MTC
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Excellent review. Makes me wonder how much longer it’ll take for this play to land a production in Los Angeles. Harmon’s *A Prayer for the Jewish Republic* has yet to be staged in LA.
For a place where somewhere around half the theater audience is Jewish, it’s a bit baffling how major Jewish-themed plays—*Leopoldstadt* being another obvious example—are being ignored by major theatres in favor of half-baked plays by mediocre talents.