Political Events in 2016 Form Backdrop for New Play Starring Frank Wood and Kelley Curran

Playwright Catherine Gropper uses that now infamous meeting in June 2016 on the Trump Tower’s 25th floor between top campaign advisors to Donald Trump and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hilary Clinton as the springboard for her latest play: “The Meeting: The Interpreter.”

The play is loosely based on an actual event with the playwright supplying the supposed dialogue. It was inspired by a chance encounter between the Gropper and the man who said he was the real-life interpreter at the meeting. In the play, that mystery person is never given a name.

“The meeting” of course is now part of a highly polarized interpretation of history that is still playing out across the political landscape.

There were obviously more than two people in the meeting that is at the center of the play but the two stars use hand puppets to portray the different players in Trump world.

We now know that the participants at the meeting eight years ago included Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and three top level Trump campaign advisors: son Donald Trump Jr., the then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, first son-in-law Jared Kushner. Public relations strategist Rob Goldstone, had set up the meeting with Trump’s advisors on behalf of his client, Russian singer-songwriter Emin Agalarov back on June 9, 2016. That meeting, however, did not come to light until April 2017 when Kushner was seeking to revise his security clearance form and had to list any contacts with foreign nationals.

The opening email to Trump Jr. was said to offer him “very high level and sensitive information” that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s opponents to this day, feel it showed key evidence of high level collaboration between Russia and the campaign. Trump himself, who was not at the meeting with his son-in-law and campaign advisors has revved up followers claiming it was all part of a “Russian hoax” meant to discredit him.

The play, just opening at the Theatre at St. Clements, features Tony winner Frank Wood (best featured actor in the 1999 play Side Man) and actress Kelley Curran who starred in the HBO series, “Gilded Age” Set against that historical backdrop, it focuses on the international interpreter thrown up against government systems of congressional and senate interrogations, catapulting him into circumstances beyond his control.

“He could be everyman,” says playwright Gropper. “It is really a play about what we stand up for,” she adds. “My character of the interpreter stands up for his family and daughter and America while not ever needing the limelight. Maybe we all have stopped listening to each other because of media glare and others interpreting for us.”

The two actors take on different roles. There are film sequences, projections, intricate lighting and sound, some breaking of the Fourth Wall. And let’s not forget the puppets utilized in the play to represent the main characters in Trump world. (Could there be a better description of those real-life characters?) “All this could be a director’s nightmare or great challenge.

Director Brian Mertes is finding it pure delight. “I truly believe Frank and Kelley have led the whole team into the moment-by-moment architecture of this extremely personal story, that we are all seeing ourselves in,” he says. “I am continually surprised, delighted, shocked, and often in awe as I work with them to find the intimate details that communicate this story.”

With his Everyman looks, Frank Wood is the perfect lead here. “I knew we needed someone with an intrepid spirit,” says Mertes, “and Frank has it.” The actor’s extensive resume includes roles in numerous films, including “Michael Clayton,” “The Taking of Pelham 123,” and “Joker.” On television, there have been too many guest spots to mention. (Though I will mention “Billions.”) But it is on the stage where Wood has shone the brightest. Ever since winning a Tony for “Side Man,” (a music-based story in which he also played a soul searcher) he has rarely taken a pause. He has a difficult time even recalling a lean period in his career, but points out that he has a working wife who helps with the mortgage. The couple reside in Harlem.

I most recently reviewed Wood in last season’s Manhattan Theatre Club production, “The Best We Could,” in which a father and daughter’s complicated relationship leads them on a cross-country drive. “I loved that one,” the actor recalls, “and that too had an unusual structure in that it had a narrator and almost felt like a staged reading.”

Wood has worked alongside iconic names: Denzel Washington (“He has high standards, keeps to himself”); Bryan Cranston (“Love him. He is there for the big moments and the small”) and many more. So why this role? “A fascinating character,” he says, “one who is not prone to performance, but is put in a performative position. After all, the interpreter was there, and obviously knew most about what happened. There is a lot to be revealed in him.”

And much to be revealed in this unusual work, soon to be the talk of off-Broadway at the Theater at St. Clements, 423 West 46th Street New York, NY 10036. [Note that the theater is accessible only by stairs.]