Auctioning the Ainsleys
Laura Schellhardt’s new comedy-drama is about an offbeat family of antiques auctioneers whose collective obsession with objects warps their relationships with one another.
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Thank you for signing up to TheWeek. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
TheatreWorks
Palo Alto, Calif.
(650) 463-1960
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
***
Laura Schellhardt’s new comedy-drama is a clever look at “how possessions define our lives,” said Robert Hurwitt in the San Francisco Chronicle. The play concerns an offbeat Midwestern family of antiques auctioneers, whose collective obsession with objects warps their relationships with one another. Alice, the terminally ill matriarch of the household, decides to “set things right” by recording the family’s history and—much to her progeny’s dismay—auctioning off their own home along with its overabundance of possessions. On stage, this action all takes place to the “rapid patter” of an auctioneer describing each object—a device that helps propel the well-paced plot. The playwright’s talent for witty turns of phrase, meanwhile, heightens the absurdity of “an auction house putting itself on the block.”
Schellhardt falters, however, by taking her characters a bit too seriously, said Janos Gereben in the San Francisco Examiner. A melodramatic, ponderous tone takes over in the second act, at which point the story becomes an “Arthur Miller–lite sort of family drama.” Alice’s adult children all have “variously dysfunctional lives.” Annalee (Molly Anne Coogan), the neurotic middle child, constantly carries a stapler, with which she reorganizes the documentation of each of her possessions. Aiden (Liam Vincent), Alice’s only son, remains a “puzzling cipher” who usually hides himself away in an empty room. The quirky characters too often come across as caricatures. That might be fine if Auctioning the Ainsleys were simply meant to be an “entertaining soap opera,” but Schellhardt clearly had loftier aspirations.
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
Sign up to our 10 Things You Need to Know Today newsletter
A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
-
What to know when filing a hurricane insurance claim
The Explainer A step-by-step to figure out what insurance will cover and what else you can do beyond filing a claim
By Becca Stanek Published
-
How fees impact your investment portfolio — and how to save on them
The Explainer Even seemingly small fees can take a big bite out of returns
By Becca Stanek Published
-
Enemy without
Cartoons
By The Week Staff Published
-
If/Then
feature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
By The Week Staff Last updated
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.
By The Week Staff Last updated