Ethan Hawke will lead a company through Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner at The Public Theater on Monday, November 2, at 7 p.m., with Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes, Jose Llana and the playwright’s nephew Tappan Wilder also taking part.
The one-night performance in the Newman Theater is the latest edition of a holiday tradition The Public began 13 years ago, and it keeps the shape the company has always given it: the play first, then a conversation. Wilder’s one-act moves 90 years of a single family’s history through one unbroken Christmas meal in about 35 minutes, and the talk that follows turns to what it leaves behind — time, family, tradition and the stories a family tells about itself.
It runs under Public Forum, the company’s series of performances and discussions, founded in 2010 and curated by Alexa Smith and Jeremy McCarter. Its past participants include Meryl Streep, James Earl Jones, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tony Kushner and Stephen Sondheim, among many others.
This year the New York evening also opens the first nationwide Long Christmas Dinner Festival. Organized by the Wilder Estate, it takes the play to more than 30 organizations in at least 20 states; our earlier report on the festival lists many of the participants.
Hawke’s Broadway credits include True West, Macbeth, Henry IV and The Coast of Utopia, which brought him a Tony Award nomination, and in 2010 he directed Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, earning a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play. On screen, he received his fifth Academy Award nomination this year for playing Lorenz Hart in Blue Moon.
Hudes comes back to The Public, which gave her musical Miss You Like Hell its New York premiere. Her stage work also includes Water by the Spoonful, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and In the Heights, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
Llana also knows the building: he appeared there in Here Lies Love, earning a Lucille Lortel Award nomination, and in Saturn Returns, and later played Here Lies Love on Broadway. His other Broadway credits include Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of The King & I, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Flower Drum Song and Rent.
Tappan Wilder manages the Wilder family estate and served as his uncle’s literary executor from 1995 to 2023.
Tickets are $55, including a $9 per-ticket service fee that is waived at the Taub Box Office. Public Theater Supporters and Partners pay $45, with no fee. Tickets are on sale now through publictheater.org.
