Long Wharf Theater
For many actors, landing a role at Long Wharf Theater is a feather in their cap, a chance to walk the same stage as Al Pacino, Brian Dennehy, or Kathleen Turner. For Kelly McQuail, who’s making her debut there in the controversial Bad Jews — which opens next week and is apparently almost sold out — it is also a homecoming.
“I knew for a very long time that I wanted to act and be in the theater,” McQuail said. “I also knew I wanted to work at Long Wharf since I was this big.”
Seated in a chair in a small rehearsal space, drinking peppermint tea, she put her hand out to just over the height of a coffee table.
The play involves three 20-something cousins and a serious girlfriend who are spending the night crammed together in a New York City apartment after the funeral of their grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. For their family dynamic, it’s a kind of perfect storm, and let’s just say things don’t go well.
McQuail’s character, Daphna Feygenbaum, “is as serious as a heart attack,” McQuail said. “So much of the humor rests on the idea that, for her, the stakes are always life and death. She an animal in the best way — she’s half earth mother, half encyclopedia. And she’s so smart. I like playing characters that I have to learn to keep up with — and reconcile with.”
McQuail grew up going to Long Wharf productions with her parents, and spent a year at the Educational Center for the Arts magnet school, which she credits with helping get her from the front-row seats to the stage.
While in high school in Newtown, she learned about New Haven’s ECA from a friend. Her guidance counselor encouraged her to enroll. Soon she was spending half her day at Newtown and half in ECA, driving back and forth between them.
“But I was doing what I really wanted to be doing, so it didn’t really feel like work,” she said.
ECA “breeds support in your fellow actors and friendship in the arts,” she said. She quickly connected with her teachers and mentors there, particularly Peter Loffredo and Michael Lerner. “They are just beautiful geniuses. They’re kind and smart and they care about every kid that comes though. And they have impeccable taste.”
At NYU she was thrown almost immediately into the theater world as a business, which was great training for the rest of her career. But “you can forget how much of a community it can be” if you’re not careful. “ECA existed as this very special place where work could get done and they would support you.”
Her only real regret? “Amy Herzog was doing her thesis project at Yale,” McQuail said, and was looking for high school students to audition to play a couple roles. “Peter and Michael pushed me to do it. But I went on vacation with my family instead.”
Herzog has since gone on to win multiple awards, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. “I kick myself to this day,” said McQuail.
Director Oliver Butler, Christy Escobar, Mike Steinmetz, Keilly McQuail, and Max Miller
McQuail and her fellow actors in Bad Jews — Michael Steinmetz, Max Michael Miller, and Christy Escobar — are all making their Long Wharf debuts under the direction of Oliver Butler, who has also been coming to the New Haven theater since he was a kid. It appears they’ve quickly developed a camaraderie, which is good for performing a play in which so much of the comedy comes from the lengths to which the characters are willing to go to be nasty to each other.
As the cousins in Bad Jews all become a little unhinged, the play digs into the tensions that many in the Jewish community face these days regarding their responsibilities to the past and their desires for the future. “But it’s also about 20-somethings figuring out what to believe in,” McQuail said, “and as their parents are getting older, figuring out what to do with their own lives.”
And what do they do with the fact that the play pulls few punches — right from the title?
“We’re a little nervous for the talk backs,” McQuail said, smiling. “Some people may be upset — but also laugh and enjoy themselves. I think it’ll be a healthy debate.”
“It’s rock ’n’ roll theater,” she added.
Though McQuail, at least, will have a hometown advantage. Her father is an actor too, “and in his brain the Long Wharf hasn’t changed a bit — like Pacino’s still upstairs, hanging out.”
Bad Jews runs at the Long Wharf Theater, 222 Sargeant Dr., from Feb. 18 to Mar. 22.
