The City of Conversation
by Anthony Giardina

Name: The City of Conversation
Brand: Anthony Giardina
SKU: 9780573703331
Rating: 3.92 (24 reviews)

The City of Conversation Book Cover — The City of Conversation Cover

Highlights

Female

Male

120 mins Present Day Reduced Casting (Doubling Possible) Interior Set Contemporary Costumes/Street Clothes

Awards & Recognition

Drama Desk Award Lucille Lortel Award Outer Critics Circle

Nominee: Two 2015 Lucille Lortel Awards Nominee: 2015 Drama Desk Award for Best Play Nominee: 2015 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best off-Broadway Play

Synopsis

In 1979, Washington D.C. was a place where people actually talked to each other...where adversaries fought it out on the Senate floor and then smoothed it out over drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

But it was all about to change.

In this play spanning 30 years and six presidential administrations, Hester Ferris throws Georgetown dinner parties that can change the course of Washington’s politics.

But when her beloved son suddenly turns up with an ambitious Reaganite girlfriend and a shocking new conservative world view, Hester must choose between preserving her family and defending the causes she's spent her whole life fighting for.

From the prolific pen of novelist, essayist, and playwright Anthony Giardina comes a play about politics in family, and families in politics.

A searing new drama, The City of Conversation delves into the ever-changing tapestry of U.S.

Government and the people who shape it off the senate floor.

Press Reviews

"Achieves something that eludes many other plays about Washington: a savvy depiction of social skill as political art, in a city that’s defined by political science... Giardina’s handiwork presents to the world one of the most fair-minded, even compassionate views of the partisan struggles of the city’s political classes you’re likely to encounter these days."
— The Washington Post

"Presents a peek at the political hostesses who pull the strings behind the scenes. Giardina’s homage to a lineage of great Georgetown ladies from Perle Mesta to Pamela Harriman is also an elegy for that bygone era before partisan politics took all the fun out of the party."
— Variety

"No matter your political persuasion, you’re very likely to feel flashes of rage and frustration. Giardina has created a microcosm of American society in one family: He brutally shows how that family is ripped apart and, more hopefully, how it could be sewn back together."
— Theatremania

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
JEAN SWIFT	—	—	—
COLIN FERRIS *	—	—	*
NNA FITZGERALD	—	—	—
HESTER FERRIS	—	—	—
GEORGE MALLONEE	—	—	—
CHANDLER HARRIS	—	—	—
CAROLYN MALLONEE	—	—	—
ETHAN FERRIS , at age 6	—	—	, at age 6
ETHAN FERRIS , at age 27*	—	—	, at age 27*
DONALD LOGAN	—	—	—