{"id":663017,"date":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/663017\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:58:12","slug":"andre-gregory-and-wallace-shawn-on-moth-days-my-dinner-with-andre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/663017\/","title":{"rendered":"Andr\u00e9 Gregory and Wallace Shawn on ‘Moth Days,’ ‘My Dinner with Andre’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andr\u00e9 Gregory, 92, and Wallace Shawn<\/a>, 82, have enjoyed one of the longest, most celebrated collaborations in theater<\/a> history. They\u2019re also at the peak of their careers this spring with the ongoing play \u201cWhat We Did Before Our Moth Days,\u201d sharply and empathetically written by Shawn with nimble direction from Gregory, at the Greenwich House Theater through May 24. <\/p>\n

Now in its final weeks, the play won Gregory and Shawn the New York Drama Critics\u2019 Circle\u2019s lifetime achievement award earlier this month, but they\u2019re also probably most adored for seemingly playing themselves in the 1981 cult favorite two-hander film<\/a> \u201cMy Dinner with Andr\u00e9,\u201d widely regarded as one of the best movies of the 1980s<\/a> and turning 45 this year.<\/p>\n

\"'Club<\/a> \"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

The lifelong friends paired up with director Louis Malle after playwright Gregory\u2019s stint in Europe, staging experimental theater and dabbling in New Age communities (and near-death experiences). As versions of themselves in the film, the estranged friends convene at the long-since shuttered Caf\u00e9 des Artistes in Manhattan to catch up on life and the universe. <\/p>\n

Decades later, the film\u2019s talkiness and monologue-forward approach also informs the style and substance of \u201cWhat We Did Before Our Moth Days.\u201d The play stars Josh Hamilton and Maria Dizzia as the parents of John Early<\/a>\u2018s characters, all of whose lives are disrupted by tragedy, romance, and the introduction of Hope Davis\u2019 character; \u201cMoth Days\u201d sees all four actors on stage at all times delivering unbroken one-person monologues that often wax as philosophical as anything out of \u201cMy Dinner with Andr\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t seen [\u2018My Dinner with Andre<\/a>\u2018] in quite a few years, and I saw it again about a year ago,\u201d the French-born American Gregory, warmly erudite, told IndieWire of the film. \u201cI was stunned how much it emphasized the dangers of fascism coming to America. How did we know that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MY\u2018My Dinner with Andr\u00e9\u2019\u00a9New Yorker Films\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Over the phone, Shawn added, \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty strange experience to see yourself [when rewatching \u201cMy Dinner with Andre\u201d]. \u2026 People can look at photographs of themselves, but very few people have the opportunity to see a great filmmaker\u2019s image of them for two hours. That\u2019s very bizarre, that\u2019s a strange opportunity, and it\u2019s a little bit disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gregory said, \u201cWally and I had never made a film before. My connection to film [prior] had been that I\u2019d spent an hour or two on the set of \u2018Cleopatra\u2019 watching Elizabeth daylight. I knew nothing about movies, and neither did he. And it seems astounding that we made something that\u2019s so fine. \u2026 \u2018My Dinner with Andr\u00e9\u2019 is deceptive in the same way \u2018Moth Days\u2019 is deceptive because both are rooted in storytelling. \u2018Dinner with Andr\u00e9\u2019 is more cinematic or as visual as \u2018Lawrence of Arabia\u2019 or \u2018Bridge on the River Kwai\u2019 because we tell stories, and you in your imagination, see this landscape that isn\u2019t shown on the screen. So it\u2019s deceptive. Yes, it\u2019s two people sitting at a table, but it\u2019s much larger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shawn has described his new play as a rebuke to Donald Trump and everyone in his milieu; while \u201cMoth Days\u201d is not expressly political, it is, as Gregory put it, \u201cpolitical in the sense that the Trump people are anti-human, let\u2019s face it. They\u2019re going around and killing people. And this play is about, on one level, the tenderness of human relationships\u2019 fragility. It\u2019s about human relationships and people, and the performances, I think, are authentically human. So human, I would say today is anti-Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play begins with twenty-something Tim (Early) learning of his father\u2019s unexpected death, leading him down a rabbit hole of reminiscence over his father Dick\u2019s (Hamilton) longtime and strained marriage to his mother Elle (Dizzia), before bonding with Dick\u2019s late-in-life lover Elaine (Hope), who has problems of her own. Each gets stage time to speak at length about their dreams, both realized and broken, and regrets.<\/p>\n

\"'What\u2018What We Did Before Our Moth Days\u2019Julieta Cervantes<\/p>\n

This searing and often caustically funny play, Shawn said, \u201cis very sympathetic to the suffering of human beings and to the condition of human beings, whereas I feel that the regime of Trump and his cronies expresses the concern for human beings of psychopaths. They don\u2019t seem to believe in compassion or in the sentiments that Jesus expressed in the sermon on the mountain, even though they claim to be Christians or Christian nationalists. But the other thing is that Andr\u00e9\u2019s production is so subtle and sensitive. The gangsters who are running the country almost pride themselves on a lack of subtlety and finesse. We\u2019re doing a very delicate production that in its very style is a rebuke to that brutality and crudeness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMoth Days\u201d runs three-and-a-half hours and is earnestly a series of soliloquies, save for one scene in which the wine-loving Elaine connects with Tim over their shared past. It asks patience of the audience (even with two intermissions) at a moment attentions are in high deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are not used to reading books or seeing long movies,\u201d Gregory said. \u201cWhat\u2019s been incredible for me is that it\u2019s long and about subjects you\u2019d think wouldn\u2019t interest anybody under 70 years old, but in fact, our audience has been very young, and on many nights, they\u2019ve been screaming with joy. Given the response to this, I should go to Broadway and do a series of six Simon comedies at the Music Box! The audience has been receiving it with a surprising amount of laughter. I always love it when there\u2019s laughter in the theater.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AndreWallace Shawn and Andr\u00e9 Gregory in 2010 at a \u2018My Dinner with Andr\u00e9\u2019 reunionWireImage<\/p>\n

A standout monologue from the play feels torn from the pages of \u201cMy Dinner with Andr\u00e9,\u201d in which Tim describes how events in one\u2019s life are unavoidable and prewritten, almost like a book. It\u2019s not quite intelligent design, or meant to be understood as religious, but Shawn is using a similar framework to carve out a philosophy of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cTim, in that speech, is basically saying, yeah, well, maybe my father did things that were not great, but that was because of how he was raised,\u201d Shawn said, \u201cand how his life was. We may not really be responsible for the bad things we do, and maybe we should not be even punished for them. I don\u2019t really believe in punishment. But on the other hand, the whole play does raise moral issues that are sort of absurd to raise if you take Tim\u2019s point of view as the complete truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Gregory said he found that same monologue \u201ccomforting and funny.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Even though Gregory hadn\u2019t directed a show in at least 12 years, he said Shawn \u201ccharmed\u201d him into coming back to the stage. They first collaborated in the \u201970s with Gregory directing Shawn\u2019s \u201cOur Late Night.\u201d \u201cI directed two of Wally\u2019s plays in the theater, and after that, I directed \u2018The Master Builder,\u2019 which became a Jonathan Demme film. I have to say I never thought I\u2019d direct anything again,\u201d Gregory said.<\/p>\n

Shawn said of Gregory, \u201cI still think of him as having authority. Certainly in the rehearsal room, and when we\u2019re talking about how the play is going to unfold, I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019m intimidated by him, but I feel a certain deference to him. He\u2019s always been 10 years older than me. When we first met, that was a huge age difference. He was a grown-up, and I was not quite. Now, we\u2019re both old men. In some ways, I\u2019m more assertive. I know more about theater. I knew nothing when I first met him. Now I assert myself a bit more but somehow I still think he carries a certain wisdom and authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat We Did Before Our Moth Days\u201d runs at the Greenwich House Theater through Sunday, May 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andr\u00e9 Gregory, 92, and Wallace Shawn, 82, have enjoyed one of the longest, most celebrated collaborations in theater…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[244957,49,48,75,1554,337,244958,18916,195860],"class_list":["post-663017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-andre-gregory","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-my-dinner-with-andre","tag-theater","tag-wallace-shawn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}