At 92 and 82, the ‘My Dinner with Andre’ Men Are Somehow at the Peak of Their Careers

André Gregory, 92, and Wallace Shawn, 82, have enjoyed one of the longest, most celebrated collaborations in theater history. They’re also at the peak of their careers this spring with the ongoing play “What We Did Before Our Moth Days,” sharply and empathetically written by Shawn with nimble direction from Gregory, at the Greenwich House Theater through May 24.

Now in its final weeks, the play won Gregory and Shawn the New York Drama Critics’ Circle’s lifetime achievement award earlier this month, but they’re also probably most adored for seemingly playing themselves in the 1981 cult favorite two-hander film “My Dinner with André,” widely regarded as one of the best movies of the 1980s and turning 45 this year.

The lifelong friends paired up with director Louis Malle after playwright Gregory’s 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 Café des Artistes in Manhattan to catch up on life and the universe.

Decades later, the film’s talkiness and monologue-forward approach also informs the style and substance of “What We Did Before Our Moth Days.” The play stars Josh Hamilton and Maria Dizzia as the parents of John Early‘s characters, all of whose lives are disrupted by tragedy, romance, and the introduction of Hope Davis’ character; “Moth Days” sees all four actors on stage at all times delivering unbroken one-person monologues that often wax as philosophical as anything out of “My Dinner with André.”

“I hadn’t seen [‘My Dinner with Andre‘] in quite a few years, and I saw it again about a year ago,” the French-born American Gregory, warmly erudite, told IndieWire of the film. “I was stunned how much it emphasized the dangers of fascism coming to America. How did we know that?”

Over the phone, Shawn added, “It’s a pretty strange experience to see yourself [when rewatching “My Dinner with Andre”]. … People can look at photographs of themselves, but very few people have the opportunity to see a great filmmaker’s image of them for two hours. That’s very bizarre, that’s a strange opportunity, and it’s a little bit disturbing.”

Gregory said, “Wally and I had never made a film before. My connection to film [prior] had been that I’d spent an hour or two on the set of ‘Cleopatra’ watching Elizabeth daylight. I knew nothing about movies, and neither did he. And it seems astounding that we made something that’s so fine. … ‘My Dinner with André’ is deceptive in the same way ‘Moth Days’ is deceptive because both are rooted in storytelling. ‘Dinner with André’ is more cinematic or as visual as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ or ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ because we tell stories, and you in your imagination, see this landscape that isn’t shown on the screen. So it’s deceptive. Yes, it’s two people sitting at a table, but it’s much larger.”

Shawn has described his new play as a rebuke to Donald Trump and everyone in his milieu; while “Moth Days” is not expressly political, it is, as Gregory put it, “political in the sense that the Trump people are anti-human, let’s face it. They’re going around and killing people. And this play is about, on one level, the tenderness of human relationships’ fragility. It’s about human relationships and people, and the performances, I think, are authentically human. So human, I would say today is anti-Trump.”

The play begins with twenty-something Tim (Early) learning of his father’s unexpected death, leading him down a rabbit hole of reminiscence over his father Dick’s (Hamilton) longtime and strained marriage to his mother Elle (Dizzia), before bonding with Dick’s 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.

This searing and often caustically funny play, Shawn said, “is 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’t 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 André’s production is so subtle and sensitive. The gangsters who are running the country almost pride themselves on a lack of subtlety and finesse. We’re doing a very delicate production that in its very style is a rebuke to that brutality and crudeness.”

“Moth Days” 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.

“People are not used to reading books or seeing long movies,” Gregory said. “What’s been incredible for me is that it’s long and about subjects you’d think wouldn’t interest anybody under 70 years old, but in fact, our audience has been very young, and on many nights, they’ve 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’s laughter in the theater.”

A standout monologue from the play feels torn from the pages of “My Dinner with André,” in which Tim describes how events in one’s life are unavoidable and prewritten, almost like a book. It’s 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.

“Tim, 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,” Shawn said, “and 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’t 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’s point of view as the complete truth.”

(Gregory said he found that same monologue “comforting and funny.”)

Even though Gregory hadn’t directed a show in at least 12 years, he said Shawn “charmed” him into coming back to the stage. They first collaborated in the ’70s with Gregory directing Shawn’s “Our Late Night.” “I directed two of Wally’s plays in the theater, and after that, I directed ‘The Master Builder,’ which became a Jonathan Demme film. I have to say I never thought I’d direct anything again,” Gregory said.

Shawn said of Gregory, “I still think of him as having authority. Certainly in the rehearsal room, and when we’re talking about how the play is going to unfold, I wouldn’t say I’m intimidated by him, but I feel a certain deference to him. He’s 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’re both old men. In some ways, I’m 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.”

“What We Did Before Our Moth Days” runs at the Greenwich House Theater through Sunday, May 24.