Two Playwrights Tackle Father Figures

"If you've been going to the theatre lately, you've seen plenty of what I've started to think of as "piñata plays." In this sort of story, a big family gets together and there are a lot of secrets. For most of the evening, the mood is darkly funny and a little ominous, as the siblings take undermining jabs and the in-laws roll their eyes. Then, in the final act, there's a hugely satisfying, usually drunken throwdown in which every single person gets to take a whack at the piñata."

"But there's something equally pleasurable-and more rare-about a play that pulls off the opposite trick, that revels in the way family members can love one another, can stay connected and build instead of destroying, even amid loss and uncertainty. It's a hard thing to make dramatic and an easy thing to make corny, but it's as authentic a theme as dysfunction."

"In the buoyant revival of Clare Barron's 2014 father-daughter play, "You Got Older," which is running under A24's new management at the Cherry Lane Theatre, the creators find glory in something ordinary: an adult child and an aging parent trying their best."

Contemporary theatre frequently features "piñata plays" where families gather, tensions build through dark humor and undermining remarks, and culminate in explosive final acts revealing secrets about infidelity and addiction. While these plays offer cathartic entertainment, equally authentic but rarer plays explore the opposite dynamic: family members loving and supporting each other through loss and uncertainty. Clare Barron's "You Got Older" exemplifies this latter approach, focusing on an adult daughter and aging father navigating connection and care. The play centers on Mae, a thirty-two-year-old lawyer who returns to rural Washington after losing her job and relationship, staying with her widowed father undergoing cancer treatment. Rather than emphasizing dysfunction, the play finds dramatic power in ordinary moments of familial love and mutual effort.

Read at The New Yorker