TDF Stages

Frank Wood and Kelley Curran discuss the politically charged play The Meeting: The Interpreter

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What is the personal toll of political malfeasance? That question is at the heart of Catherine Gropper's new play The Meeting: The Interpreter, which centers on an unnamed translator who was present at the notorious 2016 Trump Tower meeting between senior members of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russian lobbyists. Gropper and her director, Brian Mertes, had no interest in a realistic recreation of recent history. Instead, the production at Off Broadway's Theatre at St. Clement's is a time-hopping, multimedia, fictionalized fantasia exploring how bad actors turned one man's life—and by extension, the entire American populace—upside down.

Ambitious in scope and avant-garde in execution—the actors are seen both on stage and in close-up thanks to a live video feed—The Meeting: The Interpreter is difficult to digest and likely to inspire furious post-performance Googling. (I now know all about the Magnitsky Act.) But the project's challenges are exactly why stars Frank Wood and Kelley Curran decided to sign on.

"I got an email from the casting director saying, 'Brian wants to offer you the role. Here's the script. It's very strange,'" Curran recalls with a laugh. After reading it, she met with Mertes via Zoom and was quickly sold. "Brian is such a singular creative mind," she says about the veteran theatre-maker, who currently serves as the Head of the MFA Directing Program at Brown University/Trinity Rep. "The way he spoke about the play sounded so exciting, unique and thrilling." Bonus: She could fit the production in before she starts filming season 3 of HBO's The Gilded Age, on which she plays scheming social climber Turner.

Wood, a Tony-winning stage stalwart, was also impressed by Mertes' vision. "I knew Brian by reputation because of his Lake Lucille Chekhov Project, years of these amazing productions," Wood explains. "I spoke to him about the script, how it could be made manifest on stage and that was how I got hooked."

Wood spends the show portraying the interpreter, while Curran (with some help from Julian Crouch's unsettling puppets) tackles everyone else—members of Congress, an FBI agent, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and a sympathetic journalist who seems to be a stand-in for the playwright, who actually met the anonymous translator in question in 2020.

"I believe he and Catherine were originally collaborating on the play together, then he stepped away and she kept going," says Curran. Gropper redacted his name to respect his privacy and, perhaps, to give the piece a universal feel—the interpreter could be anyone who gets caught up in a scandal. "It's so interesting because people are like, 'Oh, is it a very political play?' And to a point it is, but it's also a personal reckoning," Curran notes. "Who am I loyal to? Where is my moral compass in this situation? How do I work through the aftermath of this event that changed my whole life?"

Still, politics are never far from mind in this presidential election year, especially since Trump and his cronies continue to stir up controversy. "So much has happened since then," Curran concedes. "So many disturbing, disruptive, dizzying political moments. This play reminds us of what the stakes are and all the things that happened to get us to this particularly precarious moment in American history."

And sometimes that history walks through the door: Just last week, one of the participants in the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, came to see the show. "I looked out into the audience and saw a man with a very big face," Wood recalls. "I realized it was him—he looks just like his puppet!"

This is the second time Wood and Curran have collaborated. In 2010, they were in Signature Theatre Company's revival of Angels in America, in which Wood played a very different figure in Donald Trump's life: his mentor Roy Cohn. "I was an understudy, but we got to perform together a few times," Curran remembers. "I was so excited when they told me Frank was doing this show." Now her goal is to help him get a part on The Gilded Age, which is known for casting theatre actors. "We'd be so lucky to have him," she says. "Having worked with Frank on what felt like an impossible play, I don't think there's anything that he can't do."

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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for The Meeting: The Interpreter. Go here to browse our latest discounts for dance, theatre and concerts.

The Meeting: The Interpreter is also frequently available at our TKTS Discount Booths.