WARNING: SPOLIERS
The Balusters is undeniably hilarious, tragically relevant, and deceptively poignant. It makes me uncomfortable when I identify with the bad guy in any story—especially if that evil persona is racist, dishonest, and generally repugnant. And, yes, Eliot Emerson, artfully played by Richard Thomas, is all of those things.
The Weight of the Years
But Thomas’s character is also aging, suffering health dire complications, and struggling to accept, or even understand, the societal changes happening around him. I don’t care who you are, getting old can make the world feel less familiar, less friendly, and less accessible. The one trade off all older people find solace in is that aging makes you more comfortable with yourself. You’ve made it this far. You’ve had some successes. You’ve had plenty of failures. And you’ve fought battles that most people in your life never knew about. You’re still here. And you should be proud of that. But none of that is an excuse to be evil. Sorry, Eliot Emerson.
The Trap of Nostalgia
Personally, I miss so fucking much about how the world used to be. I miss going to concerts before smartphones ruined everything. I miss cheap bodega BECs (that’s bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches for non-New Yorkers). I miss feeling hopeful about most things. But I’m not anymore. So I can relate to Eliot Emerson’s deep sense of loss at his changing neighborhood. That is, until we—the audience—discover what Eliot really misses about his old neighborhood. All the comforting caucasian whiteness of his neighbors and community. Monoculture can be intoxicatingly comforting for people who never had a desire to learn anything new about the world or themselves.
The Mirror of Humanity
And that is what makes The Balusters deceptively poignant. Our memories create our sense of identity because they are our spiritual record of who made us feel loved, who made us laugh (or cry), and who made us, us: the person we see in the mirror every day. The Balusters is deceptively human, because we don’t really see how this production touches us personally until after the show is over. Until after we’ve finished laughing at the characters’ absurd hypocrisies, endearing idiosyncrasies, and gut-wrenching flaws. The playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire, wonderfully fucks up each of his characters with real humanity. They’re all imperfect on polite and menacingly powerful levels. They’re all judgmental of each other while being blind to their own shortcomings. They’re all human, just like you, me, and the people all around us. That commonality we share is what makes us able to laugh at other people, and, most importantly, laugh at ourselves—if, that is, you are willing to examine your life from outside your own insecurities.
The Walton’s Guy: Wait, Who Dis?
Now, let’s talk shop about why this play actually works, because it isn’t just a lecture on social decay—it’s acting and writing that makes Broadway different than any other art form.
First, Richard Thomas is a powerhouse. Most people of a certain age know him as the wholesome John-Boy Walton, but in The Balusters, he flips the script. He plays Eliot with a frail, shaking hand that makes you want to offer him a seat, while simultaneously spewing rhetoric that makes you want to shove him into traffic. It’s a masterclass in nuance. He captures that specific brand of white NIMBY entitlement—the self-unaware, privileged guy who thinks he owns the sidewalk because his grandfather once shoveled snow on it. But Thomas doesn’t play him as a cartoon villain. He plays him as a man who genuinely believes he is the victim of a world that moved on without his permission. The travesty of it all!
For anyone who still relates to Thomas as John-Boy, you can’t help but appreciate the dichotomy of all-American hardscrabble home of the Waltons during the 1930s and 1940s depression era and the modern, affluent home of the Emerson family, of which Thomas is the last, lone witness, in The Balusters. If anything, it demonstrates the range of Thomas’s acting capabilities and the scope of his impressive career.
A Smoldering Cast of Suspicions
The entire cast is equally compelling, allowing Thomas to develop and unfold his character within a hilarious group of vibrant neighborhood personalities. Playing opposite Thomas is the incredible Anika Noni Rose who portrayed Kyra Marshall, the new African-American neighbor who has the audacity to suggest adding a stop sign or speed “hump” to a historic neighborhood street to make it safer for everyone. The chemistry between Kyra and Eliot is a quiet smolder of suspicions that begins to smoke and—as you learn more about their true beliefs—you can’t wait for it to catch fire in a bonfire of reality checks. Kyra isn’t just a cliche foil to Eliot’s old-school bigotry. She represents the modern, upwardly mobile professional who is navigating her own cultural minefield of identity. Rose plays her with a controlled intensity that perfectly matches Thomas’s erratic outbursts.
But everyone in the cast deserves a shout out!
Penny Buell: This character is brought to life by the seasoned performance of Marylouise Burke, who makes being sadly old incredibly funny.
Willow Gibbons: Kayli Carter steps into the role of Willow, adding another layer to the play’s complex neighborhood dynamics, especially when her progressive hero complex is brutally dismantled by her neighborhood association peers.
Isaac Rosario: Ricardo Chavira portrays Isaac, a key figure in the unfolding drama, who offers a blue-collar, immigrant earnestness that feels questionable at times, and sincere during others—an intriguingly and complexly vague personality in a play largely about race.
Brooks Duncan: Carl Clemons-Hopkins who is making his Broadway debut by taking on the role of Brooks, contributing to the show’s examination of human flaws, and probably offering him a reprieve from being known as “that guy from Hacks.”
Ruth Ackerman: Margaret Colin plays Ruth, one of the many residents grappling with the shifting landscape of their community, and whose rabbit-fur jacket is a hysterical character unto itself.
Alan Kirby: Michael Esper delivers a performance as Alan, a character navigating the play’s messy, human conflicts with the unfortunate position of having to represent the awkward and ironically marginalized white guy in charge of neighborhood security.
Luz Baccay: Maria-Christina Oliveras portrays the housekeeper Luz, adding to the diverse and judgmental tapestry of the neighborhood, ultimately delivering a satisfying knockout punch to the storyline.
Melissa Han: Jeena Yi rounds out the ensemble as the dry and deadpan Melissa, an integral part of the production’s deceptive humanity, who is both confident and yet captivatingly evasive.
The Architecture of a Script
The script comes from the mind of David Lindsay-Abaire, and if you know his work (Rabbit Hole, Good People, Kimberly Akimbo), you know he doesn’t do simple. Lindsay-Abaire has this uncanny ability to write dialogue that sounds like people actually talking—messy, overlapping, and often avoiding the point entirely until the tension boils over. In The Balusters, he uses the literal architecture of a house as a metaphor for the structural rot of prejudice. The “balusters” of the title aren’t just stair parts; they are the thin, fragile supports holding up a legacy that’s crumbling. He treats the audience like adults, refusing to wrap everything up in a neat little bow of forgiveness. Sometimes, people just suck, and Lindsay-Abaire isn’t afraid to let that sit in the air.
Intimacy and the Big Reveal
As for the venue, seeing this at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre is a vibe. It’s an intimate space, which is essential for a play like this. When Eliot gets into one of his racist, phlegm-filled coughing fits, you can practically feel the spittle in the front row. It forces an intimacy that makes the discomfort unavoidable. There’s no hiding in the back of a cavernous house here. You are trapped in that living room with Eliot, and that’s exactly where the play wants you.
The spoiler that everyone will be talking about at the bar afterward is the final act reveal: the discovery that Eliot sabotaged the life of his former housekeeper, Luz, because the thought of her living in their neighborhood in a house bigger than his was unacceptable—meaning Luz’s color and status were not welcome in Eliot’s perverted version of the changing neighborhood. We find out that Eliot’s “nostalgia” isn’t just about the shops or the safety; it’s rooted in a very specific ilk of bigotry and entitlement that is all too familiar in America. It re-contextualizes every “funny” old-man rant he had in the first act. Suddenly, the “quirky” grandpa isn’t quirky anymore. He’s a participant in a cycle of hate that he’s tried to polish over with time.
For the Bros out there: this isn’t some dainty, theatre-kid production (not that there’s anything wrong with that). It’s gritty, it’s funny as shit, and it’s a brutal mirror reflecting the ugliness of certain people we all meet at some point in our lives. It’s about the houses we build for ourselves—both the physical ones and the mental ones—and what happens when the foundation is built on cultural garbage. Go see it, and be prepared to discuss it with your Broadway partner over a post-show cocktail. This is the kind of theater that truly matters, and it’s worth being talked about.
