‘We’re all on constantly shifting sands’: the play capturing life during the US midterm elections

Playwright Richard Nelson’s acclaimed Rhinebeck Panorama series returns for another timely look at the fictional Apple family living in a divided America Richard Nelson learned a great lesson, cliched as it is, late in his writing career: the thing you toss off without overthinking can end up being some of your life’s greatest work.

In the program notes for We’ll See, the latest in what has become a 12-play series, he admits he used to view the plays as “disposable, because of their being tied to a given time and place”. Every November from 2010–2013, Nelson checked in on the fictional Apple family in upstate New York…