Gionfriddo Returns to Huntington with World Premiere

Gina Gionfriddo and Peter DuBois met in graduate school at Brown University in the 1990s and have been close friends and artistic collaborators ever since. DuBois, artistic director of the Huntington Theatre Company, directed world premieres of playwright Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw and Rapture, Blister, Burn, and later staged both for the Huntington. Now, the two have paired up again for the world premiere of Gionfriddo’s mordant comedy Can You Forgive Her? onstage at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts through April 24.

The action of Can You Forgive Her? takes place on Halloween night, but the characters’ darkly humorous struggles are well-timed for a backdrop of the coming presidential election and America’s contentious conversation about society’s haves and have-nots, says DuBois.

The play’s central character, Miranda, is deep in debt and desperate for a way out. Played by Meredith Forlenza (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner), she depends on one man, an emotionally unavailable doctor (Allyn Burrows), to pay the bills, while engaged in another, ultimately ill-fated, liaison with Sateesh (Theo Iyer). It’s trick-or-treat time as a charismatic, grieving stranger, played by Chris Henry Coffee, offers Miranda shelter and a drink. With her trademark gallows humor, Gionfriddo presents complicated characters wrestling with a hunger for love and money and haunted by their pasts.

DuBois helped Gionfriddo develop Can You Forgive Her? through a series of readings and a weeklong workshop in New York before bringing it to the Huntington. “We pulled it apart and looked at it beat by beat,” says DuBois, who plans to direct the play next season off-Broadway. “Gina is one of the strongest playwright voices of our generation, and I wanted to make sure her project had a home, whether it was here in Boston or somewhere else. From just an idea, this play has gone to some pretty amazing places creatively.”

Becky Shaw, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2009, had a long off-Broadway run at Second Stage, winning an Outer Critics Circle award for best play, and in London at the Almeida Theatre. In a New York Times review, Charles Isherwood writes that the play is “as engrossing as it is ferociously funny.” Rapture, Blister, Burn, also a Pulitzer Prize finalist, had a twice-extended run off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and recently completed a successful run at the Hampstead Theatre in London.

The director describes Gionfriddo’s gift for dialogue as “Noel Coward–like.” That gift has made her a sought-after and successful writer for television as well as the stage, although the two media have very different demands. She has worked as a writer and producer for Law & Order and Law & Order: Criminal Intent and as a writer for Cold Case, Borgia, and House of Cards. “She’s flexing both muscles all the time, TV and playwriting, and it can be a unifying thing, theatrically,” DuBois says. “I also love how Gina has an extensive knowledge of horror films, and you can feel that in the pacing.” Without giving anything away, he says, Can Your Forgive Her? has moments bound to make the audience gasp.

As for the five characters, they are complicated and flawed in their own ways, but extremely sympathetic. Gionfriddo is “a master at writing those kind of characters,” says DuBois. “On the page these characters behave so badly, but when you give them flesh and blood and see their internal conflicts,” questioning why we are drawn to them is like saying, why would you watch Breaking Bad? “People are interested in the complexity of good people making bad choices.”

The play’s premiere is especially timely, DuBois says, given how it explores debt, wealth, and the struggle to move into the middle class. “I think it is so relevant to this election and could not have been timed better in terms of just the conversation going on right now between and within the Democratic and Republican parties,” he says. Audiences “will love spending time with these characters, and they’ll walk away with very strong impressions.”

Can You Forgive Her? runs at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston, through April 24, 2016. Purchase tickets here, by phone at 617-266-0800, or in person at the BU Theatre box office, 264 Huntington Ave., or at the Calderwood Pavilion box office. Patrons 35 and younger may purchase $25 tickets (ID required) for any production, and there is a $5 discount for seniors. Military personnel can purchase tickets for $15 and student rush tickets are also available for $15. Members of the BU community get $10 off (ID required) and are also eligible for a special subscribers discount rate. Follow the Huntington Theatre Company on Twitter at @huntington.