Table Settings

Written & Directed by James Lapine

Table Settings is a wildly funny comedy is about three generations of a Jewish family. All the fast-paced action takes place around an all-purpose dining table; sometimes a restaurant table, and other times the dining table of a Jewish mother to end all Jewish mothers. Other characters include an exceedingly irreverent younger son, his martini-swilling older brother who is married to a shiksa, and the older brother's two kids. Table Settings, a highly acclaimed and long-running Off Broadway success, is an hysterical look at an American family.

Table Settings (Workshop)

Written & Directed by James Lapine

Playwrights Horizons
March 21, 1979 - April 1, 1979

  • James Lapine, Playwright

    James Lapine, Director

    Playwrights Horizons, Producer

    Richard Goodwin, Set Designer

    Robert Wojewodski, Costume Designer

    Annie Wrightson, Lighting Designer

    Michael Spellman, Sound Designer

    Robert Moss, Managing Director

    André Bishop, Artistic Director

    Kevin Mangan, Stage Manager

  • David Marshall Grant: Younger Son
    Clayton Berry: Older Son
    Chris Weatherhead: Wife
    Marta Kober: Granddaughter
    Frances Chaney: Mother
    Carlo Imperato: Grandson
    Carolyn Hurlburt: Girlfriend
    Paul Sparer: Voiceover

Table Settings (Off-Broadway)

Written & Directed by James Lapine

Playwrights Horizons
January 14, 1980 - August 31, 1980

Photos by Martha Swope

  • James Lapine, Playwright

    James Lapine, Director

    Stephen Graham, Producer

    Playwrights Horizons, Producer

    Luis Sanjurjo, Producer

    Joan Stein, Producer

    Heidi Landesman, Set Designer

    Robert Wojewodski, Costume Designer

    Beverly Emmons, Lighting Designer

    Albert Poland, General Manager

    Barbara Carroll, Press Representative

    David Powers, Press Representative

    Michael Spellman, Production Stage Manager

  • Mark Blum: Younger Son
    Frances Chaney: Mother
    Eric Gurry: Grandson
    Carolyn Hurlburt: Girlfriend
    Marta Kober: Granddaughter
    Paul Sparer: Voice Over
    Brent Spiner: Older Son
    Chris Weatherhead: Wife

    Understudies:
    Beverly Barbieri: Wife/ Granddaughter/ Girlfriend
    Richard Bay: Younger Son/ Older Son
    Benjamin Grossman: Grandson
    Charlotte Jones: Mother

Reviews & Features

“Last season, Mr. Lapine gave us an imaginative translation onto the stage of Gertrude Stein's happily fragmented poem Photograph. It was an abstract, disciplined work, but the playfulness kept spilling through. Table Settings, which is being performed in a workshop version at Playwrights Horizons, is a series of basically naturalistic sketches set out in a series of skewed rhythms and ellipses that give them an absurd cast. The skits are fragments from the life of a typical, comfortably placed and endlessly displaced middle‐class family.

Richard Eder for The New York Times, 1979