In response to the bombings at the Boston Marathon on Monday, the playwright Richard Greenberg revisited the text of his new play, “The Assembled Parties,†and excised several lines that referred to Boston and to a student bomb-maker at Harvard.
The lines, which in the original are spoken in passing and have no bearing on the play’s plot, were deleted before the play opened at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Wednesday evening. It had been in previews since March 21.
The play, which Ben Brantley described in The New York Times as “smart, sad and so impossibly well-spoken that you may feel like giving up on conversation†visits an Upper West Side Jewish family, the Bascovs, during Christmas dinners in 1980 and 2000, and stars Jessica Hecht, Jeremy Shamos and Judith Light.
During the opening act, in the play’s original version, Mr. Shamos’s character, Jeff, a college friend of one of the Bascov boys, is asked how he likes Boston. “There is something wrong with Boston, isn’t there?†he replies. He later speaks about a student who attempted to build a bomb as an extra-credit project.
“The Assembled Parties,†which runs through June 2, is the eighth of Mr. Greenberg’s plays to be produced by the Manhattan Theater Club. It is directed by Lynne Meadow, the club’s artistic director. Mr. Greenberg’s “Take Me Out,†which had its New York premiere at the Public Theater and ran 355 performances at the Walter Kerr Theater, won the Tony Award for best play in 2003.
