![\"Mia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/EIH_2.jpeg\")
Mia Katigbak (Mari Eimas-Dietrich)<\/p>\nEverything Is Here, a new one-act by Peggy Stafford, scrutinizes life in an American senior-living facility in a warm-hearted, semi-surreal way. Smoothly and artfully staged and acted, it\u2019s as funny as it is touching.<\/p>\n
The action takes place in one of the facility\u2019s common areas. A fish tank and an electric keyboard are the only items available to occupy the residents\u2019 time. But when we meet our three elderly heroines, they\u2019re lying on the floor taking part in an acting exercise led by Grant (Pete Simpson), a struggling 40-something actor who takes himself too seriously.<\/p>\n
Grant is both a hilarious caricature and an attractor of empathy. He\u2019s genuinely solicitous of the seniors. He\u2019s also sincerely hung up on nurse Nikki, played by Suzannah Millonzi, who is acutely heartbreaking in a minimalist kind of way \u2013 it\u2019s a subtly remarkable performance. Nikki is just as lonely as Grant is. But Simpson\u2019s Grant had the audience in stitches at times during the December 6 opening-night performance, leading acting exercises and enlisting the ladies in line-reading for his upcoming audition for Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire.<\/p>\n
Mia Katigbak (Mari Eimas-Dietrich)<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s Stafford\u2019s portraits of the residents that form the heart of the play. There\u2019s sardonic kleptomaniac Janice (the always <\/a>good<\/a> Mia Katigbak, who memorably portrayed Gertrude Stein<\/a> awhile back); shaky and not-quite-with-it Bev (the gifted comic Jan Leslie Harding<\/a>); and cool-cucumber Bonnie (Petronia Paley), a former flight attendant and the only one who sincerely tries to make the most of the liveliness Grant offers. The women\u2019s interactions can bond but also sting. Soliloquies and, more obliquely, short sequences of interpretive dance reveal the workings of their minds.<\/p>\n Various choreographic elements, fueled by Shane Reggi\u2019s vivid sound design, suggest the chair-workouts common in senior residences; unspoken relationships among the characters; and the residents\u2019 inner desires to live full lives they can\u2019t manage now. Those desires remain fantasies, of course: Bonnie reminisces; Bev pines for romance and a family life that never was; Janice plays tunes from her youth on the piano. And all submit to Nikki\u2019s medical ministrations with more or less resignation.<\/p>\n Bev\u2019s retirement savings have run dry and she\u2019s planning to move out and live as a boarder. A comic figure in the early scenes, with a kooky Ruth Gordon-esque manner, she delivers a heartbreaking soliloquy late in the action in the play\u2019s real climax. Nikki accompanies Bev\u2019s speech with a frenzied interpretive dance (the roiling, emotive choreography is by Lisa Fagan).<\/p>\n Paralleling the spoken action, Grant woos Nikki in the back garden. It\u2019s a real place but also a silent fantasy-land visible behind a screen, guarded by a creepy garden gnome. There, life is expressed through stylized movement \u2013 just one of the many unabashedly theatrical elements of the production.<\/p>\n A couple of the choreographed moments were, for me, a bit hard to interpret, though still compelling. All told, the artificiality adds a good deal of depth. Director Meghan Finn wrangles it all artfully, with a sense of fun and wonder. Everything Is Here offers several layers of enjoyment. I came in thinking it might be depressing given the subject matter (I\u2019m personally sadly familiar with it.) But while I wouldn\u2019t call it a happy story, it\u2019s far from a hopeless one. There\u2019s hope for love. There\u2019s hope for aging well. The theater says so, so it must be true.<\/p>\n Everything Is Here<\/a> is presented at 59e59 Theaters<\/a> in collaboration with New Georges<\/a> and Clubbed Thumb<\/a> through December 20, 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everything Is Here, a new one-act by Peggy Stafford, scrutinizes life in an American senior-living facility in a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":434911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[201496,201497,1081,5229,201498,201499,201500,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,201501,20349,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-434910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-201496","9":"tag-59e59-theaters","10":"tag-aging","11":"tag-america","12":"tag-clubbed-thumb","13":"tag-meghan-finn","14":"tag-new-georges","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-newyork","18":"tag-newyorkcity","19":"tag-ny","20":"tag-nyc","21":"tag-peggy-stafford","22":"tag-senior-living","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-united-states-of-america","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","27":"tag-us","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115687989853423784","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Susannah](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/EIH_4.jpeg\")
(L-R) Susannah Millonzi, Petronia Paley (Mari Eimas-Dietrich)<\/p>\n