This month at the Plaza Playhouse Theater, director Jordana Lawrence takes on the generation gap with Joe DiPietro’s Over the River and Through the Woods. The production explores the bonds of familial relationships, specifically those between grandparents and their grandchildren.
DiPietro’s play features a tight-knit Italian-American family in New Jersey: four grandparents and their grandson, Nick. This close connection to family is an essential aspect of these characters’ lifestyles — Nick sees his grandparents every Sunday to share a meal. Yet as life moves forward, it becomes clear that their cheerful ritual cannot continue forever. Nick lands a job as a marketing executive across the country, and he’s ecstatic for the next big step in his life, but he also knows breaking the news to his grandparents will be challenging. As he feared, his grandparents see Nick’s choice to pursue the career opportunity as a betrayal; an abandonment of the family’s traditional values and a gross mismanagement of his life priorities.
Over the River illustrates how a generation gap is created when the cultural stagnation of one age group interacts with, but cannot progress with, a landscape of constantly evolving social norms. It examines how the new generation’s lack of adherence to antiquated cultural expectations can be a catalyst for misunderstanding and resentment between the old and the young. “When I started prepping for this show,” Lawrence said, “I realized that we have a generation gap now, and probably always will. Every generation brings to the table new ideas and ways to live their lives, and those of us on the other side of the mountain have a hard time understanding the differences. Most can’t. Today’s generation is all about technology, and there are things in this play that touch on that. In this play, the generational gap is between Nick and his grandparents, who can’t understand why he is moving across the country for a job. They never did. Maybe he won’t ever marry. They really can’t wrap their heads around it. That’s what made this play very interesting to me.”