Cory Asinovsky, Ashlynn Alexander, Will Turner, Jenna Grossano and Emma March Barash in a scene from Friends Don't Let Friends
Description: Blends the melodrama of Henrik Ibsen’s HEDDA GABLER with the silliness of network television and bears witness to a public nervous breakdown with built in commercial breaks.
First Produced: 2011
Date Added: 9/10/2012
Content Advisory: Some strong language
Keywords:
Comedy ·
Satire/Parody ·
Drama ·
Coming of Age ·
Romance ·
Tearjerker ·
Meta ·
Single Set ·
Show Biz ·
Art and Artists ·
Behind the Scenes ·
Movies/Film/TV ·
Characters are Mostly Young Adults ·
Brechtian ·
Naturalism/Realism ·
Postmodern ·
Literature and Writing ·
Adaptations ·
Large Cast Size
2 Acts, 120 Minutes
4 Females, 4 Males, 4 Gender Neutral
NOTE:
Inquiries concerning all rights should be addressed to morgan.jenness@abramsartny.com
From the Author:
Friends Don't Let Friends is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler set in present day on the soundstage of a popular sit-com. It chronicles a young actress's struggle to be taken seriously in a cruel business, surrounded by cruel people. It's about art: the people that make it, the public that consumes it, the painful process of receiving feedback, the frustration of creating something 'authentic' or 'meaningful.' It's about control and how terrifying it can be to feel it slipping away.
Above all, however, it's about asking for help. How can we be there for the ones we love when they're too proud to reach out to us? And what is it that makes it so hard to ask in the first place? It takes a village to keep it together these days. It's essential that we let our friends be there for us when we need them. It's essential to extend a helping hand to someone who's drowning. We often find it challenging to humble ourselves, but it's so much worse living in the wake of a preventable tragedy.
It's a cruel punch line, isn't it? Friends don't let friends shoot themselves in the head.
Casting/Production Comments:
CASTING: All of the characters are in their twenties/thirties and generally Brooklyn-esque leaning towards hipster (nothing too extreme, it is a sit-com after all). The 'actor' characters are not so different, but they're a little more toned-down and realistic.
THE SIT-COM VS. 'REAL LIFE': In the original production, there were a couple of things we did to emphasize the different existences. During the 'episodes' we used a recorded laugh track as well as canned applause, 'awwww's, etc. The sit-com was brightly lit and brightly colored. 'Real life' was much more stark and quiet.
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Original Production Information
FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS was first performed in 2011 at Walkerspace, New York City. It was presented by Less Than Rent Theatre with the following cast and credits:
LAURA/HANNAH: Becca Ballenger
BRAD: Will Turner
GEORGE: Cory Asinofsky
ISAAC: Jason Zeren
JULES: Jenna Grossano
ELLIE: Emma March Barash
BETH: Ashlynn Alexander
HENRY: Thomas Hettrick
ENSEMBLE: Andrew Deeb, Evan Kincade, Melissa Mickens, Nicole Roberts
DIRECTOR: Rachel Buethe
SCENIC DESIGN: Caite Hevner
COSTUME DESIGN: Amanda Brooklyn
LIGHT DESIGN: Ryan Seelig
SOUND DESIGN: Gifford Williams
Review by
Martin Denton
Less Than Rent Theatre's new show Friends Don't Let Friends is a supremely accomplished and well-crafted dramedy that represents cutting-edge indie theater at its finest. It's all the more impressive when you know that most of the artists involved are in college or recent graduates; LTR is not even two years old! The talent here is palpable, and it's exciting to anticipate what these folks will create as they grow and develop.
But for now we need only contemplate this excellent play. Friends Don't Let Friends takes place on the set of a sitcom called "Reel Deal"—a hit sitcom, now in its fourth season, that centers around George, a young filmmaker who has just snagged an Academy Award nomination for a documentary he made, and Hannah, his live-in girlfriend who has long been his chief researcher and collaborator. The set is the living room and kitchen of their apartment, and it will remind you of the main locale of so many young artsy New Yorker sitcoms' sets, from Mad About You to Friends to Seinfeld (and probably newer examples that I'd name if I still kept up with TV these days).
The other recurring characters on "Reel Deal" are Brad, George's producer—kind of a goofy next-door neighbor guy: Kramer, but better looking; Jules, George's sister, who also collaborates on the films; and Beth, George's new quirky, ditsy personal assistant. And then there are the current guest characters: Ellie, another documentary researcher, and Isaac, a genius filmmaker ex-pal of George's who is back in town to make a new film...about the exact same subject as George's current one. Complications and modualted hilarity ensue.
The thing is, playwright James Presson and his collaborators here utterly and absolutely NAIL sitcoms. Their rhythms, their tones, their gimmicks, their tricks, their soulless soulfulness—all of this is portrayed with a savvy felicity that's close enough to the real thing to be eerie but still removed sufficiently to function as parody/commentary. We see three more-or-less complete episodes of "Reel Deal" in the course of Friends Don't Let Friends—a potentially dicey challenge that Presson and company pull off spectacularly well.
In between the episodes, and during the commercial breaks, we meet the actors who play these roles. Our main subject is Laura, the woman who plays Hannah. Her father was a famous "legitimate" actor and unspoken pressures and expectations clearly exist within their troubled relationship. Plus, Laura thinks that Hannah's character is changing ("People on the Internet don't like me," she worries); maybe her character is being written out of the series? There's an identity crisis plaguing Laura, one with a strong metaphysical aspect. But our time with Laura is fleeting and our glimpses of her and her colleagues are brief and impressionistic. And tantalizing: I think I would have liked to see more of the "real" people's stories in Friends Don't Let Friends; I wonder if the impact of the final scenes might have been heightened if the audience had a bit more background.
Throughout all of these "real" scenes, a crew of five silent stagehands stay busy and in the background. Some of the actors suggest that the TV show they are making is not much more than a trifle—patently true as we watch it unfold; yet the disconnect between the actors and the stagehands is unsettling.
The play's director is Rachel Buethe, who realizes Presson's script and the scripts-within-the-script with incisiveness and precision. Designers are Caite Hevner (set), Amanda Brooklyn (costumes), Ryan Seelig (lighting), and Gifford Williams (sound); all make invaluable contributions, creating a world for the play that is familiar yet filled with artifice.
An ensemble of a dozen actors perform the work exceptionally well. Andrew Deeb, Tommy Hettrick, Evan Kincade, Melissa Mickens and Nicole Roberts are the crew; they shine particularly in the moments leading up to the first scene in Act Two, dressing and cleaning the set to a melancholy soundtrack that sums up a lot of what the play seems to be about. As the guest stars, Emma March Barash (Ellie) and Jason Zeren (Isaac) manage the interesting trick of not quite blending in with the rest of their colleagues. As the regulars, Ashlynn Alexander (Beth), Becca Ballenger (Hannah), Cory Asinofsky (George), Jenna Grossano (Jules), and Will Turner (Brad), achieve something just as subtle, creating a cohesive "family" in the TV segments and a less tightly-knit but clearly professional team in the "real" segments.
This is, in all, an impressive production. Presson and crew nail the sitcom oeuvre so well that I fear we may lose them to a network should some television executive turn up during the run of Friends Don't Let Friends. I wish them success, but I'd hate for the indie theater scene to lose them so soon. They've got more on their minds than a weekly helping of comfort food; this is as rewarding and nutritious a theatrical stew as you'll find anywhere in NYC right now.
review of the original production in 2011
Excerpt from
Friends Don't Let Friends
HANNAH. Y’know, that was not what I was expecting to happen.
ISAAC. I’m lost, Hannah. I’m a ship at sea. I’m compass-less! I’m adrift! I’m—
HANNAH. No, yeah. I got it.
ISAAC. What can I do? Oh god… [crumples on the floor, starts to cry]
HANNAH. Why did you do that?
ISAAC. Do what?
HANNAH. Throw your laptop into the river.
ISAAC. I didn’t.
HANNAH. You didn’t?
ISAAC. No…
HANNAH. You didn’t?
ISAAC. I lost it.
HANNAH [covering]. You what?!
ISAAC. I lost it! I did not cast it into any river… Far worse… I let it out of my sight. Carelessly. Inattentively. Absentmindedly. Like a negligent parent losing his child at the mall.
HANNAH [gently]. You don’t have to—
ISAAC. Someone should call the department of child services on me. [shouting] Call child services! Call child services!
HANNAH. Isaac. [he stops] Nothing. It’s just… We have neighbors.
