Betsy Aidem (left) plays Greta, a wealthy artist who is paid a visit by Tanner (Colleen Litchfield), a fundraiser for the ACLU, in Matthew Freeman’s The Ask at the Wild Project.
Matthew Freeman’s play The Ask seems deceptively simple on the surface and remains so for quite a while. In an Upper West Side apartment, a hostess and her guest are meeting. The apartment owner is a well-known photographer, and coffee-table art books (Alice Neel, e.g.) lie on the floor of her apartment; photographs (by Cindy Sherman, among others) adorn the walls. Craig Napoliello’s impressively detailed set evokes solid wealth—the reason the younger guest is paying a call.
This engrossing two-hander takes a while to indicate what’s on Freeman’s mind, as the visitor, Tanner, tries to connect with Greta, the solicitous artist. They talk about their backgrounds.
Greta takes a phone call that erupts into a comical rant with her partner. Photographs by Kent Meister.
“I love Cindy Sherman,” says Tanner, adding, in response to seeing a picture of a Brontosaurus on the wall, “I also have a soft spot for dinosaurs. I had a dinosaur stuffed animal. A triceratops named Sara.”
“That’s adorable,” says Greta, whose Brontosaurus photo is a personal and not a professional hanging. “Well, we’re going to get along just fine.” That’s not, of course, how things go. Tanner is from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and soon the two are in the deep weeds of talking about the organization, its origins, and its mission.
Under Jessi D. Hill’s deft direction, the characters’ physical movements echo their social stations. Greta flings her arms around; Tanner (Colleen Litchfield) keeps her elbows at her side and moves awkwardly. Greta wears a flowing loose blouse; Tanner is in a sweater, jacket and slacks: smart but androgynous. Her job as a fund-raiser seems to give the play its title—until a late, ironic twist.
Greta has been a longtime ACLU supporter, but her gifts lapsed in the previous year. And she’s upset that her contact, Carol, has probably been let go from the organization in a round of layoffs.
Greta listens to one of Tanner's pitches.
Although the gripes take time to bubble up, the cat-and-mouse dialogue is so engaging, and the actors so skilled at inhabiting their characters, that it took a while for this reviewer to register that Litchfield’s sympathetic Tanner is nonbinary, in spite of references to J.K. Rowling that should have, in retrospect, been a tip-off. Greta has become disenchanted because the ACLU has started to embrace positions that, in her view, are too far afield from its original mission.
Their initial discussions of art widen to encompass various forms of tax-deductible giving and, ultimately, politics. It may not sound mesmerizing, but the actors make it engaging. Greta, a firebrand in her youth, clearly wants more sparks from the ACLU:
All I’m reading is how you want money for things that have nothing to do with your mission, nothing. I even read a story about how members of your staff were calling the Constitution a white supremacist document. So, of course, I think to myself: what the heck is going on over there? And then Dobbs, we lose Roe, and you’re over here playing around with trying to cancel student debt while fucking Alito is burning witches.
Even with Tanner constrained by the reserve required of a fundraiser (although the audience witnesses a moment of deep pain) and Greta free to talk more personally—she has a terrific speech about buying a car from an obnoxious dealer, as well as a long phone call berating someone (afterward it turns out she was in the wrong)—the outcome is uncertain. But ultimately Greta’s liberalism and free speech beliefs collide with what Tanner expects the ACLU to stand for, and that includes “civil rights and civil liberties for everyone who calls this country home.”
Tanner faces a formidable adversary with surface cool.
Greta: I imagine … your individuality is important to you. Asserting your identity, your uniqueness, that’s been important to you. It might have even been a struggle. …
Tanner: Yes, it’s been a struggle.
Greta: Right, and I’m sorry about that, but you see, I also want to be treated as an individual. As a woman, I mean, as a woman I’ve had to fight against the perception that I am a certain way, that I am defined by all these stereotypes about women.
By the climax, when Tanner points out that the Brontosaurus is now known as an Apatosaurus—“new evidence,” she tells Greta—it’s clear from the deft metaphor that the struggle is whether the ACLU should be able to widen its mission to encompass others’ newly recognized civil rights? Or should it only defend the law and the Constitution as they exist? Even though Tanner’s “ask” for a bigger donation is breathtaking, in the final moments Freeman provides Greta with an ask of her own that resonates after the blackout.
Matthew Freeman’s The Ask runs at the Wild Project (195 E. 3rd St.) through Sept. 28. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit thewildproject.org.
Playwright: Matthew Freeman
Director: Jessi D. Hill
Scenic Design: Craig Napoliello
Costume Design: Nicole Wee
Lighting Design: Daisy Long
Sound Design: Cody Hom
