SOCIAL SECURITY
by Andrew Bergman
(January 12 to February 3, 2024)
Director: Ken Stern
Producer: Shabnam Munjal
About the play. . . .
Social Security focuses on trendy Manhattan art gallery owners Barbara and David Kahn, whose life is upended when her Mineola housewife sister Trudy deposits their eccentric mother Sophie on the couple’s doorstep while she and her husband Martin head to Buffalo to rescue their sexually precocious college student daughter from a menage a trois with two men. Barbara and David introduce Sophie to suave nonagenarian artist Maurice Koenig, who offers to paint her portrait and soon begins to brighten her life in ways she never expected in her twilight years.
After twenty-six previews, the Broadway production, directed by Mike Nichols, opened on April 17, 1986, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it ran for 388 performances. The cast included Marlo Thomas as Barbara, Ron Silver as David, Joanna Gleason as Trudy, Olympia Dukakis as Sophie, Stefan Schnabel as Maurice, and Kenneth Welsh as Martin.
“Just when you were beginning to think you were never going to laugh on Broadway again, along comes Social Security. . . The play is a hoot, and better yet, a sophisticated, civilized hoot.” ~ New York Post
About Andrew Bergman, the playwright. . . .
After receiving a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Andrew Bergman broke into the film industry by writing the original screenplay that served as the basis for Mel Brooks’s classic Blazing Saddles and was among the co-writers who adapted it into its final state.
Bergman wrote Oh, God! You Devil with George Burns, Fletch (1985) starring Chevy Chase, The Freshman starring Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick, and Striptease starring Demi Moore – directing several of them. He has also written four novels, all of them hard-boiled mysteries. In 2007, Bergman received the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Writing from the Writers Guild of America.
About Ken Stern, the director…
In his career as high school drama teacher and department head, Ken directed 24 musicals, 15 plays, and 50 collective shows – such plays as Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii, The Crucible, Tartuffe, Picnic, Twelfth Night and Two Gentlemen of Verona, as well as musicals like Oliver, West Side Story, The Music Man, and Cabaret.
Once released from the bonds of employment, Ken started to direct plays for community theatres both east and west of us: Picasso at the Lapin Agile (East Side Players), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Jitters, The Sisters Rosensweig, and Amy’s View (Burl Oak Theatre Group). For The NAGS Players: Night Watch and most recently, Willow Quartet (May 2023). This will be his second show directed for Village Players, following 2018’s Crimes of the Heart. Special note: Ken played the lead role in Village Players’ 1979 production of A Thousand Clowns.
In honour of our 50th season: to see an archival photo and cast/crew list from the 1979 Village Players production (A Thousand Clowns) with Ken Stern, click on the 50th Season logo below. . . .
Village Players 