Playwright Will Eno talks about ‘The Realistic Joneses’ at Spooky Action Theater

By Celia Wren
Washington Post

The Realistic Joneses” is the only play by Will Eno to have reached Broadway, notwithstanding his work on the misleadingly titled “Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical.” Some might see his scant presence on the Great White Way as testifying to the limited appeal of his stylistically daring, plot-light, intermittently dark and deadpan scripts, which have been widely performed in less glitzy arenas. But Eno doesn’t yearn for popularity, in any case. “I am trying to write things with a purpose and meaning and actionable point to them,” he says. “So I don’t get too hung up on whether somebody likes something or not.”

A now-wry, now-sober riff on marriage and the awareness of death, featuring two sometimes awkward and secretive small-town couples who share a surname, “Realistic Joneses” is receiving a Washington area premiere at Spooky Action Theater. Under the direction of Gillian Drake, Brandon McCoy (“Veep”) and other actors interpret a play that, Eno says, acknowledges “the way we can sort of carry our own mortality around like it’s a big, dirty secret. And in wanting to hide that from other people, we end up accidentally hiding all sorts of other parts of ourselves.”

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