Save this article to read it later.

Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.

How does this guy come along and write this play and not talk to any primary sources?

Article image

a fretful Arnold askedTheTimes Union.

If its fiction, he shouldnt use the peoples actual names … Sure, she had flaws like anyone else, but she was intelligent and complex.

If [the play] portrays her as a one-dimensional, foul-mouthed Democratic hack, Ill be upset.

Arnold need not worry.

Second, Whites title is intentionally ambiguous.

White is not making a documentary but telling a story.

Its also the story of a love triangle.

What they never acknowledge is the obvious: that their triangle has the wrong point on top.

Given their personalities and talents, its Polly that should and could be running Albany.

But this is 1977, and Polly is a grandmother with P.T.A.

(And Scotch, Scotchy, Scotch, Scotch.)

That much is historical.

Associated with the mayor or not, shell be damned if she stops working for him.

Theres noyoungblood any more, she shoots at the fidgety Erastus, the whole partys gettin old!

Just sat there in the bowl til we closed the lid on it.

But their lives arent working anymore.

[A] committeeman used to know every.

That voter had a problem.

And you know what happened at the end of the day?

That ward three mother?

Whos she voting for?

Let me tell you who.

When we were all doing our job, Erastus, we knew what she was having fordinner.

Because we were eating itwithher.

Whites dialogue is audibly fun to speak, and often peppered with political observations that feel meaty and real.

Theyre surely still whispered on a daily basis behind all levels of contemporary closed doors.

Its whom you know and whom you owe.

Here we are after another much-hyped New York primary thats left us with the status quo.

Sounds like a vaudeville routine.

Routine is what it is, and a damn hard thing to break.

The Trueis at the Pershing Square Signature Center through October 28.