Ariel Kay

End Days occurs in the trough between the shockwaves of 9/11 and America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. The characters are adrift and unmoored to the lives they once led, having quickly grabbed on to seemingly firmer anchors in this chaotic time. However, throughout the play they learn their newfound selves are even less concrete than the ones they have abandoned.

Deborah Zoe Laufer‘s play centers around Rachel Stein (Molly Ephraim), a sixteen-year-old whose father (Peter Friedman) worked in the Twin Towers, and has since developed PTSD and no longer participates in the lives around him. Her mother (Deidre O’Connell), once a disciple of Proust and Camus, has taken up the Good Book as her new moral code, and is driving the rest of the family nuts with her constant pleas to repent and be saved. Rachel sticks to her atheistic upbringing and dons goth makeup and clothes as her own way of telling the world to count her out. The family seems on the brink of collapse when Nelson Steinberg (Dane DeHaan), an Elvis-impersonating high school student, enters their lives. [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Deborah Zoe Laufer, End Days

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