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Dirty Laundry  By  cover art

Dirty Laundry

By: Mathilde Dratwa
Narrated by: Reed Birney, Alison Pill, Marsha Mason, Portia, Tala Ashe, Melissa Dougherty
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Publisher's summary

An uproariously opinionated chorus of female voices (Portia, Tala Ashe, and Melissa Dougherty) provides the galloping cadence to Mathilde Dratwa’s new play Dirty Laundry, a comedy-drama that puts everything on the table to explore the extremes of human emotion.

A woman (Alison Pill) finds herself grappling with both grief and anger following the sudden death of her mother and the shocking revelation of her father’s infidelity. Her father (Reed Birney), on the other hand, is just trying his best to verbalize his own complicated feelings about love, loss, lust…and household chores.

And the other woman (Marsha Mason) simply wonders: Is she still “the other woman” when the original woman is gone?

Playwright Mathilde Dratwa was awarded a commission through the Audible Emerging Playwrights Fund, an initiative dedicated to developing innovative original plays driven by language and voice. As an Audible-commissioned playwright, she received funding and creative support to develop Dirty Laundry.

©2023 Mathilde Dratwa (P)2023 AO Media LLC
Mathilde Dratwa

About the Creator

Mathilde Dratwa’s plays include Milk and Gall, which was produced at Theatre503 in London in 2021, and A Play about David Mamet Writing a Play about Harvey Weinstein. Her work has been developed and presented by the Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Rattlestick, LAByrinth Theater Company, the Great Plains Theater Conference, the Playwrights' Center, and in London at the Young Vic. Mathilde is a member of Dorset Theater Festival's Women Artists Writing Group, a member of the Orchard Project's Greenhouse and a two-time Pulitzer Center grant recipient. Recently, she was a Dramatist Guild Foundation Playwriting Fellow, a member of New York Foundation for the Arts' Immigrant Artist Program and a co-leader of the FilmShop collective. She is also the co-founder of Moms-in-Film, which, among other things, provided free childcare to filmmaker-parents at SXSW and Sundance.

Brian Roff

About the Director

Brian Roff is a director and producer based in Brooklyn who specializes in the development of new plays. He’s been involved with Dirty Laundry since its early stages and directed Mathilde Dratwa’s play Milk & Gall with Zoe Kazan at the LAByrinth Theater Company Barn Series. Other credits include Frank Amends by Halley Feiffer (New Ohio Theater), The Puppetmaster of Lodz by Gilles Segal (Berkshire Theatre Group), Dutch Masters by Greg Keller (Berkshire Theatre Group & LAByrinth), Ceremony by Mark Schultz (Rising Phoenix Rep), and Crazy Little Thing by Melissa Ross (Center Stage). Brian also wrote and directed thirteen annual Celebrity Charades benefits for LAByrinth. He was assistant director to Philip Seymour Hoffman on The Little Flower of East Orange (Public Theater), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Public Theater), and Our Lady of 121st Street (Union Square Theatre), all by Stephen Adly Guirgis. He is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company.

About the Performer

Alison Pill most recently appeared in season two of the CBS All Access series, STAR TREK: PICARD and is set to star in HELLO TOMORROW! for Apple TV. She was previously seen in Alex Garland’s FX miniseries, DEVS, and Lena Waithe's Amazon series, Them. Pill’s other television work includes Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Cult, the ABC drama The Family, the acclaimed Aaron Sorkin HBO series The Newsroom, the HBO drama In, The Book of Daniel, and Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows.
Alison’s film credits include All My Puny Sorrows, which premiered at TIFF in 2021 and the Oscar nominated biopic, Vice, written and directed by Adam McKay, opposite Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Steve Carrell. Pill’s film credits also include, Miss Sloane, Hail Caesar!, Snowpiercer, Goon, Scott Pilgrim VS. The World, Milk, Dan In Real Life, Dear Wendy, and Pieces in April. She will next be seen in the independent feature film, Eric Larue, which is set to be directed by Michael Shannon.
Alison also starred on Broadway in the Tony nominated production of Three Tall Women, written by Edward Albee, directed by Joe Mantello, and opposite Glenda Jackson and Laurie Metcalf. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway debut in The Lieutenant of Inishmore and for a Lucille Lortel Award for On The Mountain. She won The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble in the U.S. premiere of The Distance From Here.

About the Performer

A celebrated member of the New York theatre community, Reed won a Tony Award for The Humans. He has received numerous other awards and nominations for plays including Casa Valentina, Man From Nebraska, Uncle Vanya, Blasted, and Circle Mirror Transfromation. On television, he can be seen on the most recent season of HBO’s Succession and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as the Apple TV+ series Home Before Dark. He is also well known for his performance as Vice President Donald Blythe in the Netflix series House of Cards.
In film, Reed received a Gotham Award nomination for his performance in the Bleecker Street feature Mass opposite Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton. The film also received the Robert Altman award at the Independent Spirit Awards, honoring the ensemble cast, director, and casting team. This season, Reed appeared in Searchlight's The Menu opposite Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes. Other recent film credits include the Universal/Blumhouse thriller The Hunt and Netflix’s The Forty-Year-Old Version and Lost Girls, as well as Strawberry Mansion.
Reed lives in New York.

About the Performer

Marsha Mason has received an Outer Critics Circle Award for Irish Rep Theater’s Little Gem. She has starred in and/or directed on and off Broadway as well as several regional theaters. Plays include Cyrano, All’s Well That Ends Well, Impressionism, Night at the Iguana, Old Times, Watch on the Rhine, and Happy Birthday, Wanda June. She has directed Chapter Two, Steel Magnolias, and Juno’s Swans. Her awards include 4 Academy Awards nominations, 2 Golden Globes Awards, a Grammy nomination, an Emmy nomination, 2 People’s Choice awards, and a BAFTA nomination. Marsha has also performed and directed for LA Theater Works, which records plays for the Library of Congress and teachers across the United States. She most recently starred in and directed Lost In Yonkers at Hartford Stage in 2022.

About the Performer

Tala Ashe recently received a Best Actress Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance in English, Sanaz Toosi’s Lortel Award winning play at the Atlantic Theatre Company before segueing into the critically acclaimed Vagrant Trilogy for the Public Theater. For five years, Tala was a series regular on DC'S *Legends of Tomorrow playing "Zari Tomaz", the first Muslim-American superhero on television. Her other TV work includes the upcoming Girls On The Bus for HBO Max, recurring stints on Smash and American Odyssey both for NBC, as well as a host of guest starring roles. Tala has worked at numerous off-Broadway and regional theaters including: The Atlantic Theater, The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, LCT3, The Old Globe and OSF.

About the Performer

Melissa Dougherty is an actor, writer, and producer. She is enamored with ultra low budget indie film, so you most likely haven’t seen her work. But just in case, she can be seen in the series Dinette (Tribeca Film Festival), and the films Senior Escort Service (Lower East Side Film Festival), The Dark End of the Street, Blunderpuss, The Speed of Light, and Twenty Minutes. She was Co-Executive Producer of the film Piercing (Sundance Film Festival) and Executive Producer of To the Moon (American Film Festival). In addition, she has been cut out of a few films you may know. When she grows up, she would like to be Cher circa 1987-1989.

About the Performer

To Kill A Mockingbird (Broadway), Stew (Walkerspace, World Premiere, Pulitzer Finalist), The Rose Tattoo (Broadway), Rinse, Repeat (Pershing Square Linney Theatre), Ruined (MTC/Geffen Playhouse), McReele (Roundabout Theatre Company), LAByrinth Theatre Company: Our Lady of 121st St., In Arabia We’d All Be Kings. Regional: Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination/ don’t get got (Williamstown Theatre Festival) Sweat (Mark Taper), Artney Jackson, Fences (Longwharf & McCarter Theater), Our Town (Ford’s Theatre), Film: Lapsis, All The Little Things We Kill, Skin, From Nowhere, St. Vincent, The Greatest, The Messenger, Please Give. Television: New Amsterdam, Big Dogs, Madam Secretary, Bull, She’s Gotta Have It, The Blacklist.

What listeners say about Dirty Laundry

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  • Overall
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    5 out of 5 stars

Bravo! Awesome voice acted drama!!!

I don't write reviews very often. Hardly ever. But I just wanted to say how good this very human story about a relationship between father and daughter is.
I was a child in the 70s when radio shows were still a thing.
I heard many famous plays during those days. I loved Mystery Night Theater and I would love more voice stories like this.
I loved the voices that chimed in all the time.
Excellent performance and directing.
More please!!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Can't figure out the story.

It started out slow, and I was hoping it would get better, but it never did. I couldn't listen to all of it.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not worth the time

Very disappointed thought there would be a story but failed. Fell flat. Time spent lost

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Took a Bit but Well Worth the Listen

This is a play about love, loss, and lust and not necessarily in that order. While other reviewers talked about finding humor, I did not. For me this was a very serious, very real situation.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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I liked it!

I was up early with a hungry baby, this was an excellent use of my morning. I also have a mother who has passed away, so I’m sure that changed the way I heard it. Definitely worth the couple hours!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Give it a chance

I want to know if monogamy is not the cornerstone of marriage, what is? But it’s only to judge by your own marriage. Some stay in it because of love. We only have forgiveness to help us through the many human mistakes that we make in life and if trust is broken forever..infidelity hurts not just the married couple but all the people in and around the relationship. This play does give us something to think about.

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The story touched me in a way I was not expecting it to. Hit hard. Exactly what I needed. Exactly the right time.

The performances were real, and although it seemed a little chaotic, I believe that’s the point because when something like this happens, your emotions are all over the place.

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Interesting read

Enjoyed it! Interesting and very exciting. The performance was very interesting and surprising. Would recommend

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Great acting

Interesting story and I like the style in which it was written. The acting gave it an extra dimension. The story itself doesn’t feel entirely well rounded, but it’s definitely entertaining

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Theatre You Don’t Have to Leave Your House For

This broke me and I loved it. Quintessentially theatre in performance and style, super accessible and digestible yet pulling no punches.

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