DANIEL HANDLER PENS A NEW PLAY - FOR ADULTS
Daniel Handler, the literary genius behind Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and the new novel All the Dirty Parts, has written a new play. For adults. Yes, indeed — he was pretty surprised about it, too.
“It was hard for me to tell my wife,” Handler confesses. “She’s very suspicious of the theater. It was like I had an affair or something.”
Containing all the singular and fierce comic vision found in Handler’s bestselling novels, Imaginary Comforts, or The Story of the Ghost of the Dead Rabbit opens Oct. 5 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.
“The idea for the play came after my father died,” says Handler. “Our rabbi came to the house to talk about the funeral, and I always thought she was a good rabbi, but she was really wonderful at this.”
But in the midst of this comforting scene, Handler couldn’t resist conjuring up something unfortunate. “What I thought after she left was, ‘Gosh, what if that had been terrible — what if she were just awful at it?’”
He adds, “I looked back at my calendar and realized I had written ‘rabbit’ instead of ‘rabbi,’ and I thought, ‘That’s funny. I mean, rabbits aren’t even kosher.’ And I wondered what kind of person would confuse a rabbi and a rabbit and went from there.”
Once he figured out the scenes he was writing were actually a play, he sent it off to Tony Taccone, Berkeley Rep’s artistic director. “I had worked on a past project with Tony, which was a powerful experience. I still wasn’t sure if what I’d written was a play. He failed to dissuade me, and here we are.”
Part ghost story and part dysfunctional family drama (with all its inherent comic possibilities), Imaginary Comforts follows Naomi, an inept 30-something rabbi hired to eulogize the late Dr. Gold. But his family gives Naomi little to go on, except for a very weird folktale Dr. Gold used to tell about a guy who makes a deal with a rabbit he finds in the forest. Or about a rabbit who tries to save his family. Or….
“Imaginary Comforts is about how we take a story and make it into what we need and what we desire,” says Taccone, who’s directing the play. “Daniel is fearless and subversive when it comes to comedy. This play is entirely appropriate for this world. Our world is slightly cracked, and we can cry about it or we can laugh about it.”
For his part, Handler is enjoying his affair with the theater. “I read all my own work out loud, to find the rhythm and the sense, but it never occurred to me to have other people do it. It’s been very liberating.”
Imaginary Comforts, or The Story of the Ghost of the Dead Rabbit premieres at Berkeley Rep starting Oct. 5. Tickets start at $30 and are half price for anyone under 35. Visit berkeleyrep.org.