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The Assembled Parties

 
Max Allen Review by Max Allen 4 Published: 30 Oct 2025 Hampstead Theatre Show Dates: 17 Oct 2025-22 Nov 2025

As winter settles in and the days grow shorter, London’s theatres have turned inward too, offering audiences comfort through mood and nostalgia. The Assembled Parties by Richard Greenberg arrives on British shores after its 2013 Broadway debut, delivering a compelling and encompassing performance on Hampstead Theatre’s broad main stage.

Witty, wistful and quietly moving.

We are transported to the 1970s, where a Jewish family and friends assemble for Christmas dinner. There’s humour in the very premise, and Greenberg’s intelligent, finely tuned script wastes no time drawing attention to that contradiction. The first half ambles along with witty dialogue, presented in largely static “sit and chat” staging. Director Blanche McIntyre orchestrates the piece confidently, yet before the interval I found myself craving more doings – more cooking, more refilling of drinks, more shifting of chairs – the small acts that make a performance ring true. Those moments were there, but could have been explored further. The repartee, though sharp, functions like the laying of bricks, each one adding a layer of information about relationships, status and personality. But as the characters settled into their seats and the familiar rhythm took hold, I occasionally found my attention drifting, wishing each brick weren’t laid in such a similar way.

That said, David Kennedy (Mort), Sam Marks (Jeff) and Tracy-Ann Oberman (Faye) give exemplary, lived-in performances. For a show that depends on immersing us in its world, these actors succeed in fully inhabiting theirs. Kennedy’s stint in an armchair eating nuts while blackmailing Daniel Abelson’s Ben is a standout moment – a perfect display of power and vulnerability, armed with nothing but a handful of trail mix.

The set’s early sparseness appears to be a deliberate choice: a large rotating stage, minimally furnished and surrounded by unadorned black walls that leave the actors adrift in what feels like a vacuum. Later, walls are erected and warm yellow light replaces the ghostly whites of the opening. Perhaps this shift marks a transition from memory to the present. Whatever the intention, the atmosphere benefits greatly once the space feels fully realised. I only wish that richness had been there from the start.

After the interval, we jump to December 1999 – a familiar time for me, two months after I was born. While some of the first half’s Jewish New York accents felt a touch exaggerated and the staging occasionally stagnant, the second half solidified my admiration for the piece. Magnetic performances and deftly delivered twists involving familial love and acknowledgment strike deeply but tenderly. Faye’s strength, humour and compassion; Jeff’s steadfast support; and Julie’s whimsical, keen-eyed optimism all shine as the once-crumbling house fills with light, chasing away the literal darkness of the first half.

In the end, the play achieves its aim: to illuminate the commingling of grief, expectation and love within a family. Witty, wistful and quietly moving, if you’re in the mood for a dose of holiday nostalgia and a gentle tug on the heartstrings, The Assembled Parties is a fine candidate.

Amir Nisi

Max Allen

Max Allen is an award-winning writer and performer whose acclaimed work has been staged across the UK and Europe. His debut play, FRAT, played to sold-out audiences in London and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He has a keen interest in emerging theatre, which continues to inspire and inform his own creative practice.

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The Blurb:

‘You would love the apartment – it’s like the sets of those plays you love, with the “breezy dialogue”.  They sort of talk that way and everybody’s unbelievably nice and, like, gracious and happy.  It’s like you go to New York and you look for New York but it isn’t there?  But it’s here…’

Former movie star Julie Bascov insists on taking Christmas seriously - despite her family’s reminders that that they are in fact Jewish. Every year, she and her impossibly well-heeled husband Ben host a feast in their palatial apartment on Central Park West. In December 1980, their son and his best friend Jeff come down from Harvard to join the party, and Jeff is dazzled by the Bascov clan.  But when he returns for the same occasion twenty years later he finds that much that was sown in 1980 has been reaped in the intervening years…

Richard Greenberg’s virtuosic comedy-drama was such a sensation when it played on Broadway in 2013 that it had to be extended three times. Greenberg, familiar for his plays Three Days of Rain and Take Me Out - both Pulitzer nominees – makes his Hampstead debut.

Blanche McIntyre returns to Hampstead after her productions of Letters from Max, Apex Predator and the record breaking The Invention of Love.

Cast includes: Tracy-Ann Oberman

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