Actors Theatre Playhouse opens its summer season on June 19 with “Found a Peanut” by Donald Margulies.
In this bittersweet comedy, which opens on muggy Brooklyn, N.Y., on the last day of summer vacation, 1962, Margulies reveals deep empathy for children coming of age. With irony and humor he gently unfolds the carefree innocence of youth as it gives way to the awareness of things to come.
Sam Pilo, who directs the ATP production, finds the piece particularly appealing. He writes that several years ago, with the help of social media and his nieces, he reconnected with classmates going way back to first grade. Those connections, he says, led to “a minor obsession for looking backwards for a year or two, an interesting exercise that can give you a crick in the neck.
“I had forgotten who I was in those days. That led to some interesting ruminations: What is friendship? What was the world like in those days? What endures? What really makes us who we are?”
Margulies grew up in Brooklyn, is one of America's most produced playwrights, is professor of English and theater studies at Yale University, and is the author of many works.
He received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for “Dinner with Friends.”
Featured in West Chesterfield, N.H.,-based ATP's cast are Jim Bombicino, Carrie Blake, James Gelter, Bob Gruen, Mo Hart, Bruce Holloway, John Ogorzalek, and Mark Ziter.