Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Bringing beguiling humanity to icons of popular culture: GENE & GILDA and THE ANIMALS SPEAK

• By drediman
• August 16, 2025
• No Comments

Currently Off-Broadway, you’ll find a pair of new plays that endeavor to bring beguiling humanity to icons of popular culture. I’m happy to report that they’ve largely succeed. As always, read on for my thoughts.

GENE & GILDA
Penguin Rep Theatre at 59E59 Theaters
Through September 7

First up is Penguin Rep Theatre’s production of Gene & Gilda (RECOMMENDED), Cary Gitter’s new play that has arrived at 59E59 Theaters as brisk and engaging summer fare (the play was previously seen at George Street Playhouse late last year). In short, the 80-minute work chronicles the romance between Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner, two well-known Hollywood personalities with distinctive comic sensibilities. Framed as a television interview with Wilder on The Dick Cavett Show (a recording of Cavett’s actual voice is used during the play’s interview segments), Gitter’s play is efficiently plotted and cleanly executed. Told primarily through Wilder’s eyes with incisive posthumous interjections by Radner (the fictitious interview takes place after Radner has passed away from ovarian cancer), Gene & Gilda is a balanced yet nuanced depiction of a relationship that unfolded under the public eye. As portrayed by Jonathan Randell Silver and Jordan Kai Burnett, Wilder and Radner come to life with wonderful candor. These are two accessible, thoroughly lived in performances that come across as unforced and fully realized — in addition to being convincing facsimiles of their famous subjects. Indeed, the two actors are fully committed to and have immersed themselves in their characters, formidably holding their own against each other. More importantly, there’s real chemistry between them, which makes the union between Wilder and Radner deliciously palpable despite their occasional disputes. As directed by Penguin Rep Theatre’s artistic director Joe Brancato, the production is lovingly presented, even if the play at times feels more like an outline that a true deep dive.

THE ANIMALS SPEAK: WALT DISNEY IN SOUTH AMERICA
Thirdwing Stage at The Wild Project
Through August 17

Taking a deeper dive into the stickiness of the business of Hollywood is Cameron Darwin Bossert’s The Animals Speak: Walt Disney in South America (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), the third installment of Thirdwing Stage’s “A Venomous Color” series, a trilogy of plays that successfully demystifies the early formative days of Walt Disney and his corporate empire (the previous entries include The Fairest in 2021 and Burbank in 2022, both also presented at The Wild Project in the East Village). This portion of the saga finds Disney, his wife Lillian and a few of his key creatives — including a young Mary Blair, one of the iconic animators of the corporation — on a goodwill tour of South America (namely Brazil, Argentina, and Chile) to stave off the encroachment of Nazism in the region during World War II. Untethered from their regularly scheduled programming, the motley crew find themselves assessing their lives at arm’s length, in the process refining the company’s aesthetic and agenda. Throughout, the writing is exceptional, a loving yet clear-eyed tribute that’s organic and often genuinely revealing, and rarely does it resort to sensationalism. Obviously under budgetary constraints, the production has been staged essentially on a bare stage. Nevertheless, The Animals Speak has been elegantly mounted and directed with clear intent. All the performances are spot on — particularly Bossert and Ginger Kearns as Walt and Lillian, respectively — bringing raw humanity and intriguing dimensionality to the figures behind the so-called magic.