By Mary Ann Bourbeau
LONG BRANCH – For playwright Neil LaBute, a play can be an ever-changing story, unlike film and television, which, when completed, are set in stone.
Take his latest production, “Comfort,” which is being presented at NJ Repertory Theatre from April 17 to May 11. It was staged once before at the St. Louis Actors’ Studio in 2021. But this time, with a different director, cast and crew, Drama Desk Award-winner LaBute is open to making changes.
“For the production in St. Louis, I was finished with the script for that moment,” said LaBute. “When somebody else says, ‘Let’s do it but, Hey, I have a thought,’ I try to stay open to those things. I could easily say it had good reviews; I like the production the way it was. But I was happy to embrace something that is a good idea.”
Known for his works on stage and screen that include “In the Company of Men,” “The Wicker Man” and “The Shape of Things,” LaBute insists that, unlike some other playwrights, he is open to changing up a script if he agrees with a suggestion.
“I’m quite good about rewriting or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “Evan (director Evan Bergman) and I didn’t pretend it hadn’t been done before, but we kind of started at square one, with the cast as well,” LaBute said, noting he was amenable to making changes.
“It never stops evolving to me. You think about it – the cast you’ve got, the different questions that are asked. I love actors who have questions because that means they’re interested. They’re not just up there to say the lines and hope to God it makes sense,” he said.
“I try to keep my mind as open as possible. I think we’ve got something that is different, but remarkably the same as what we did before,” with changes to some “tiny things and some bigger things.”
Don’t be deceived by the title, though, as “Comfort” is not what the audience will get from this production. The two-person play follows the complicated relationship between a mother and son, played by Jordan Baker (Broadway’s “Three Tall Women”) and Rudy Galvan (“Search Party,” “Shameless”), as they battle over ownership of a treasured manuscript and navigate old wounds.
“I created a woman that felt interesting to me,” said LaBute. “She’s not very motherly, but she loves her work and has been lauded for it at the expense of her husband and her son, so that felt worth examining. It’s fairly combative between the two of them most of the time, but there’s nothing better to me than slowly chipping away at something to get to the truth. That kind of a mystery is always interesting to me on stage, like the peels of an onion being pulled back to get to the truth.”
It’s LaBute’s first time presenting one of his plays at NJ Repertory Theatre, but it’s just the kind of venue he prefers, where the audience is up close to the action unfolding on stage.
“I really like that tight connection between an audience and actors, so it made perfect sense to me that this would be a good home for it,” he said. “In a thousand-seat theater, the show would just get swallowed up.”
Bergman, the associate artistic director at NJRep, has directed more than 15 plays at the Long Branch theater, many of them world premieres. This is his first time working with LaBute.
“I was intrigued when I read the play, and I wanted to work on the script with him,” Bergman said. “When you’re working with a seasoned writer, there is a confidence in them to work and rework the script. Everything is on the table. Neil’s goal is to make the play as good as it can possibly be, and his confidence as a writer allows him to be open to suggestions and ideas from actors, the director and artistic staff. That’s what a really seasoned professional writer is able to do, and Neil checks all those boxes.”
Bergman has nothing but praise for the two actors who command the stage for two hours in this dramatic production.
“Jordan Baker and Rudy Galvan are just so fierce,” he said. “They’ve been working incredibly hard given that it’s a two-character play. They’re the only people on stage, so it’s a herculean effort to get the play memorized, to work on it and develop it. I have the utmost respect for their talent and professionalism.”
Bergman also praised SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas, NJRep’s artistic director and executive producer, respectively.
“They have produced 140-plus plays at a time when new plays are a difficult thing to bring to fruition,” said Bergman. “It’s highly admirable to create and develop a new play because there is no roadmap, and they have done that tirelessly and heroically for 28 years. Their vision is so admirable.”
“Comfort” runs from April 17 to May 11 at NJ Repertory Theatre, 179 Broadway, Long Branch. Tickets are $65 and are available at njrep.org.
The article originally appeared in the April 17 – 23, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
