All the Living

The first play by the celebrated novelist Alice McDermott, in which a family navigates the shifting tides of grief, faith, and the bonds that hold them together.

It is 2017. Out on the border between Queens County and Long Island, a family and a close friend gather around a table to have dessert and play cards. They whip cream, slice cake, pour wine. Later, something stronger.

From upstairs come vague, uncertain movements. Rustling. The sound of Frank, the father, who has Alzheimer's and is being cared for by the caretaker they have hired for the evening. A night off for the family: “You deserve it, Kay. You’ve earned it.”

Over the course of two acts, Cathy (the daughter), Lauren (her wife), Paul (the son), Noreen (the friend), and Kay (the mother) speak to one another, moving around the room, circling and discursively cycling through the terrible and beautiful reasons they have been brought together: Do people only want to believe the worst, according to their own prejudices? Does a phrase like “dysfunctional family” mean anything, really? Does the church even do good in the world anymore, with all those diddling priests? You know the joke about Irish Alzheimer’s? You forget everything but the grudges.

Outside of this room, a new president has been elected, and the neighborhood continues to change. Inside there is talk, much of it, in the face of a marriage steeped in deep silences. Outside, times have moved on, children have died, been lost. Inside, there is suspension, the card before it flips: an aging parent, a pregnancy with an uncertain future, a faith that waxes and wanes.

All the Living is the celebrated novelist Alice McDermott’s first play, and it is an accomplished work: moving, elegant, and filled with her characteristic dialogue that skips between dark, kinetic humor and plainspoken emotional gravity.