INTERVIEW: Sandy Rustin brings ‘The Cottage’ to Broadway — and beyond
Photo: The Cottage stars Laura Bell Bundy as Sylvia. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by BBB with permission.
Sandy Rustin’s play The Cottage, which continues for two more weeks on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre, is a comedic farce that follows a host of characters learning about one another’s secrets, desires and betrayals. The production, directed by Jason Alexander, stars a talented cast, consisting of Laura Bell Bundy, Dana Steingold, Eric McCormack, Lilli Cooper, Alex Moffat and Nehal Joshi. Performances continue until Sunday, Oct. 29.
This production came together, in part, because of Rustin’s other day job: as a working actor. She was appearing in the musical Found at the Atlantic Theatre Company, and she was talking with one of the lead producers of that show, Victoria Lang.
“And she was sort of lamenting to me that she was seeking more female-driven content to produce for the theater, and I said, ‘Well, you know, I’m also a writer, and I have this play that’s been kicking around,’” Rustin said in a recent phone interview. “So she read it, and she said, ‘This is great. I really like this.’ And simultaneously to that, Jason Alexander was ready to make his Broadway debut as a director, and we had the same agency. So he had come to the agency and said, ‘What do you have? Do you have any new comedies?’ And they had given him a stack of comedies that were sort of tried and true, and ready for next steps, and he gravitated to The Cottage. And so I went out to L.A. and took a meeting with him, and then once he was on board I kind of introduced him then to the producing team. And then it all kind of came together, and then there was a pandemic. So we had to wait for theaters to open back up again, and then when they did, we got this time slot.”
The Cottage, a play in the same vein as Noël Coward’s comedies, was written several years ago, and it has changed each time a new production is mounted. Rustin, whose other works include the stage adaptation of Clue and Struck, likes this 1920s-set show to speak to the audience in the 21st century, and this has meant a lot of tinkering with the characters and plot.
“It’s definitely different,” Rustin said. “The script itself has evolved a lot over the course of the last 10 years. I think after Donald Trump was elected, I started to feel like I wanted to put more messages of feminism and feminist themes into all of my work, and so that certainly came into the rewrites and the revisions and the newer productions of The Cottage in the last few years. And then in addition to that, I think Jason came to this project with his own vision and his own ideas of how he wanted this production to land. He sort of took that on as well, as a new take on it, so this production, while it certainly is steeped in all of the history of how the production moved its way up over the last 10 years, this is its own entity.”
Rustin added: “When I set out initially to write this play, I was looking to create a show in the world of this Noël Coward-esque universe. I love those plays. I love the language of those plays, the comedy of those plays, everything about it, the physicality, but what I noticed when I really did a deep dive is that very often those female characters are there in service of the male characters. And that’s really how they function in the play. They’re just catalysts for the male storyline, so I was really looking to take that genre, and flip it on its head, and see what would happen if I tried to incorporate all those elements of those plays of days gone by, but do it through the lens of female characters who have something to say and a journey to make.”
Rustin’s works, in particular The Cottage and Clue, are mainstays of the community and regional theater spaces in the United States. Her hope is that her Broadway playwrighting debut leads to even more opportunities for the plays to be showcased around the country. She considers this production an honor; like so many in her industry, she’s had Broadway dreams, but she also doesn’t want to forget the local scene.
“What I hope for this play is a really long evergreen life, and while, of course, Broadway is always such an honor and an end-all-be-all, I also feel that there is a whole world of glorious regional theaters and community theaters and other countries,” she said. “I’m looking forward to productions of this play all over for years and years to come. … My hope is that this play is on a really long journey, and this is just a step in that journey.”
The playwright also wants to serve as inspiration for other voices to come forward and have their work produced in the theater. The industry has gone through many changes in the past few years, but most agree that a lot more work is needed to build equity and allow a diverse number of voices to be heard.
“If you look at the whole country and what’s happening all over, there is exciting, passionate, challenging theater happening all over the country,” Rustin said. “There’s not enough space on Broadway to support all of the voices that want to have space, so I love regional theater. I think it’s a really important part of how theater works in our country, and I place a lot of value on regional theater.”
She added: “I certainly stand on the shoulders of every single female playwright who was and was not produced on Broadway. Every woman who has come before me with this dream and this goal and her heart has paved the way for me to step into this position, and I don’t take that lightly at all. And there’s much more work to be done until we reach an equitable balance between how women and men are represented in theater, not just on Broadway, but across the whole globe, and that is definitely something that I am striving to continue to work toward and to lift up other women behind me. That is part of what I’m interested in doing also now that I’m in this position. For me, in particular, I’m a Jewish woman, and you can count on one hand how many Jewish women have been represented as playwrights on Broadway. So that for me, on a secondary level, also is really exciting, too.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Cottage, written by Sandy Rustin, continues through Sunday, Oct. 29 at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
