The American Plan

Richard Greenberg’s 'The American Plan' is a lyrical, emotionally devastating drama of maternal control, anti-semitism, and repressed desires set during the sweltering summer of 1960. The narrative unfolds at a Catskill Mountains resort hotel, where a beautiful, deeply neurotic young German-Jewish exile is kept in strict emotional captivity by her wealthy, pathologically manipulative mother, collapsing into crisis when she falls into a desperate romance with a charming but elusive young architect who harbors his own hidden history. Staged by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in 2009 under the direction of David Grindley, the pristine revival starred Lily Rabe and Mercedes Ruehl.