''Omnium Gatherum'' is a play written in 2003 by

Theresa Rebeck Theresa Rebeck (born February 19, 1958) is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's ...

and

Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros Alexandra I. Gersten-Vassilaros (born 1960) is an American playwright and actress. She is the co-author, with Theresa Rebeck, of Omnium Gatherum which was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gersten-Vassilaros is a graduate of NYU's ...

. It was one of three finalists for the 2004

Pulitzer Prize for Drama The Pulitzer Prize for Drama is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were a ...

Productions

''Omnium Gatherum'' premiered in March 2003 at the

Humana Festival Humana Festival of New American Plays is an internationally renowned festival that celebrates the contemporary American playwright. Produced annually in Louisville, Kentucky by Actors Theatre of Louisville, this festival showcases new theatric ...

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

. The play opened

Off-Broadway An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer th ...

at the Variety Arts Theatre on September 9, 2003 in previews and closed on November 30, 2003. Directed by Will Frears, the cast featured Amir Arison, Jenny Bacon, Phillip Clark (Roger), Melanna Gray (Julia), Edward A. Hajj,

Kristine Nielsen Kristine E. Nielsen (born May 28, 1955) is an American actress known for her work on Broadway and Off-Broadway. Nielsen was nominated for the 2013 Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance as Sonia in ''Vanya and Sonia and Ma ...

(Suzie), Dean Nolen (Terence), and Joseph Lyle Taylor. The play had its West Coast premiere at ACT Theatre in

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

in October 2003.

Background

"The origins of the play date to the morning of

September 11, 2001 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...

." Rebeck: "We ersten-Vassilaroswere on the phone with each other during the catastrophe, then the phones all went out and we couldn't talk for days... And when we reconnected after 9-11 we both felt right away that we wanted to engage in it as writers." The two finally decided that a dinner party "would be the best vehicle for the play's commentary about the world after Sept. 11." Gersten-Vassilaros: "You have people arguing with each other, but they all must eat food together."

Plot summary

A sophisticated and sometimes surreal dinner party in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

becomes a sounding board for a variety of cultural icons as they pontificate and argue about capitalism, terrorism, popular culture, feminism, food, wealth, heroism, morality, Eastern meditation, Star Trek, and justice. The evening is hosted by Suzie, a former caterer, in her beautiful dining room. She has invited Terence, a British journalist, Roger, an American writer, and Julia, an African-American, among others. The conversation veers from comedy to realism to satire and ends in chaos. Over it all hangs the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Critical response

Ben Brantley Benjamin D. Brantley (born October 26, 1954) is an American theater critic, journalist, editor, publisher and writer. He served as the chief theater critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1996 to 2017, and as co-chief theater critic from 2017 to ...

in his review in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote: "It is indeed a comédie à clef of sorts, with characters inspired by Martha Stewart, the journalist Christopher Hitchens, the novelist Tom Clancy and Edward Said... What makes the play sing and sting is its radical yet perfectly organic shifts in tone. Tragedy and triviality, ponderousness and pettiness are mixed into a salad so deliriously tossed that you can't separate the individual ingredients."Brantley, Ben
"Theater Review. A Feisty Feast Of Wicked Wit"
''The New York Times'', September 26, 2003

Charles Isherwood Charles Isherwood (born 1964/65) is an American theater critic. Education Isherwood is a graduate of Stanford University. Career Isherwood wrote for '' Backstage West'' in Los Angeles. In 1993, he joined the staff of ''Variety'', where he was pr ...

, reviewing for ''Variety'', wrote: "They and their sharp cast deliver a bubbly 90 minutes of entertainment as the play skillfully spices its middlebrow TV-chat-show essence with infusions of boldly orchestrated comedy."Isherwood, Charles
"Review: ‘Omnium Gatherum’"
''Variety'', September 25, 2003

References

{{reflist

External links

''Omnium Gatherum''
at the Internet off-Broadway Database Plays by Theresa Rebeck 2003 plays