“I grabbed her and said, ‘Sharon, we need to talk.’” director Cameron Watson to take the helm.īaxter was already on board when the director saw Lawrence during intermission at a show at the Pasadena Playhouse. But this time, he invited the highly regarded L.A. As someone whose own family has experienced anger and hurt feelings over political differences, he says, “I felt our theater needed to examine the seemingly insurmountable political divide.”įox often directs the productions at the New Vic, including his own stage adaptation of Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” last fall. “I’ve been wanting to do this play since November 2016,” he says in the New Vic’s posh 300-seat house. Giardina’s examination of the roots of the conflict remains pertinent, says Jonathan Fox, Ensemble Theatre Company’s artistic director. The play ends on a note of Democratic victory, Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but as subsequent events have proved, that wasn’t the end of the story. “The City of Conversation” premiered at Lincoln Center in 2014 and had a 2016 run in Beverly Hills at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts - just before the presidential election. It takes a lot to be willing to bridge those gaps.” “It’s a very human reaction to be not just sad but to have a sense of betrayal.

“The people that you have DNA in common with don’t necessarily have the same heart or mind,” Lawrence says. They taught me all my politics, and they really adhered.”Īs a family drama, “The City of Conversation” will likely resonate with anybody from a mixed-party clan. Both my stepfathers were very liberal and active.

My first stepfather worked for the Hollywood Nine, or the Hollywood Seven, or the Hollywood 10, however many there were. “My mother spoke at the March on Washington. Your mother was part of Women in Hollywood, wasn’t she?” she asks Baxter. “I’ve been part of women’s advocacy groups in the business for a long time, but the women who were there before me, they need to get credit for all that they did to begin speaking up and to risk the retaliation. It burns her up that her daughter-in-law has so much more access, just because the doors were open that she helped open but didn’t necessarily get to walk through herself. “Hester would have made a great congressperson, but she came along too early. “They very seldom had the agency of elected office, so they had to use their power in different ways,” she says. “But they didn’t see the need.”īack in the 1970s, Lawrence notes, women weren’t welcomed into politics. “Clinton was saying, ‘Go out there and get political. Baxter canvassed for Hilary Clinton and found the political ennui of younger women surprising. Like the characters they play, Baxter and Lawrence are liberal. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times ) As the generations’ political differences deepen over the following decades, they struggle to stay together as a family. Hester and Jean, both passionate Democrats, are stunned when the grownup Colin comes home with a pro-Reagan fiancée and a new conservative outlook. Baxter plays Hester’s older sister, Jean, who always has taken care of everything Hester is too busy to handle, including her son, Colin. Lawrence is Hester Ferris, a socialite (inspired by real-life movers and shakers Pamela Harriman and Perle Mesta) whose legendary Georgetown dinner parties help lubricate congressional impasses. Anthony Giardina’s play traces the partisan split in America across three decades, from 1979 to 2009, as it’s played out in one family in Washington, D.C. Mutual admiration aside, the actresses’ latest project is a serious piece of political theater in a pointedly political time. “See what I mean?” Lawrence asks the reporter. Sorry, I just realized I was doing that.”

It’s really amazing how you hold the stage in a way that - I don’t mean to compare everything to me. How would I do that?’ And I come up with some things, but the truth is, I can’t do that. Then it’s Baxter’s turn again, addressing her costar: “I watch you on the stage, and the actor in me says, ‘I think I could do that. “And she has one of the greatest boot collections I’ve ever seen in my life,” says Lawrence, peeking under the table. “I think I just get a lot of points for coming out on the ‘Today’ show, which is like setting yourself on fire on national television,” says Baxter, who had three husbands before marrying her partner Nancy Locke in 2013. “Whenever I talk about doing this play with you, the response is so universal - just how much people admire you.

A long way home meredith baxter