'Cocktail Hour' playwright A.R. Gurney: An outsider in his own family

Albert Ramsdell Gurney Jr. has a long memory. The playwright, who just celebrated his 84th birthday, recalls a long-ago moment that helps explain his dramatic impulse with "The Cocktail Hour," which opens Friday on the Guthrie proscenium stage.

Gurney was gliding through a happy childhood in Buffalo, N.Y. (a bit of a "wise-ass," he said) when his parents told him they were sending him to boarding school.

"They put me on a train and they had it all written down," Gurney said. "When you get to the south station in Boston, shift to the north station and get on a train going to Concord, New Hampshire. Get off there and someone will be there to meet you."

It all worked out and Gurney would take his place among the distinguished alumni of the exclusive St. Paul's School, but traveling alone on a train with no escort? That's the kind of thing that gets parents written up these days.

"I couldn't figure out why they were doing that to me," he said of his parents. "They said I needed some polishing up and they had a good thing in mind but it was scary and it always made me look at my family as if I were some kind of an exile."

How interesting, then, that "The Cocktail Hour" revolves around a playwright who has penned something of a tell-all drama about his family — with the astringent perspective of the outsider. Gurney has freely admitted since the play's 1988 debut that it hewed closely to his biography.

His mother, who saw it in New York, was not amused. Thankfully his father, one of Gurney's harsher critics, was dead by then. The old man was notorious for sharing his thoughts and commentary during performances — famously pestering critic Clive Barnes throughout a staging of Gurney's "The David Show," asking Barnes whether he "thought this was any good."

Gurney can laugh about it now.

"I had a play open in London shortly after that and I told my father that I was not going to let him come to opening night," Gurney said. "He asked why and I said because you'll be noisy and make remarks. That hurt his feelings."

Gurney and his wife, Molly, split time between an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a home in Roxbury, Conn. He spoke by phone from New York before heading down for a matinee of his most-famous play, "Love Letters," with Alan Alda and Candice Bergen at the Brooks Atkinson Theater.

He still writes every day, getting to his desk by 8:30 and breaking for lunch about 12:30 p.m. His afternoon output usually consists of more writing, which he dismisses as "nothing but junk."

"The morning hours are where it happens."

Retirement is not in the cards, with projects upcoming at Signature Theatre Company and the Flea Theater, both in New York.

Still a Buffalo boy

Gurney has mined his family experience in Buffalo society to profitable effect in his long and well-regarded career.

"The Dining Room" and "Family Furniture" join "The Cocktail Hour" in that WASPy milieu. His sharp observations of manners and traditions provoke laughs of recognition and satirical absurdity. In addition, he's had comic hits such as "Sylvia" and sweet reminiscences such as "Love Letters." He might be America's most prolific dramatist.

"The Cocktail Hour" takes its title from a custom that was taken for granted among the upper middle classes along the shores of Lake Erie. A son (Rod Brogan in the Guthrie production) tells his parents (Kandis Chappell and Peter Thomson) about his revealing play while they are all waiting for dinner. The maid has botched the evening's roast in the kitchen so the irritated family fills the time with more alcohol than usual. Consequently, the emotions fray as everyone gets a little more (ahem) honest.

If this scenario vaguely pricks your memory, you might recall "Other Desert Cities," which played the Guthrie in 2013. In that Jon Robin Baitz play, a daughter has dropped a devastating family memoir on her well-connected Republican parents, who lunch on this betrayal over the course of a weekend. Gurney enjoyed the play on Broadway and recognized the similarities.

"You can't copyright a plot," he said. "Besides, I thought Baitz was interested in something different — more about politics and the state of the country — and I didn't have that complication in my play."

Director Maria Aitken will stage the Guthrie production and this makes Gurney happy. Aitken did the show a year ago at Huntington Theatre Company and Gurney drove up to Boston to have a look.

"She brought a more serious dimension," Gurney said. "When I was writing 25 years ago, it was a study of amusing cultural habits. Now we know more about alcohol and what it does. Maria recognizes that."

He also feels Aitken made the play not just about family life but about a hero who learns to recognize that his parents don't really love him.

"That's the first time I've ever looked at the play in those terms and the first time I've ever looked at myself in those terms," he said. "He's kind of an outsider fighting for his life as an artist, rather than a son."

These comments from a well-seasoned man certainly resonate with the precocious lad left at a train station long ago.

"I clearly remember thinking, 'What's wrong with me the way I am at home?' "

Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299