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The Open House
“Mr. Eno has established himself as one of the most vital, distinctive voices in the American theater over the past decade. Once encountered, his style is not likely to be Wryly humorous and deeply engaged in the odd kinks and quirks of language and its fuzzy relationship to meaning, his plays are also infused with a haunted awareness of, and a sorrowful compassion for, the fundamental solitude of existence.” – New York Times
“An anarchic and deliciously clever play.” – Huffington Post
This wildly funny and subversive take on the archetypal family drama is dense with authentic feeling and pain and it ultimately evolves into something haunted and mysterious and grand, even hopeful. The Open House won a Drama Desk Award, the 2014 Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. It was on the Top Ten Plays of 2014 lists of TIME magazine, Time Out New York and the NY Daily News.
Will Eno is the author of The Realistic Joneses and Thom Pain (based on nothing) , which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Other works include Middletown, The Flu Season, a tragedy, Intermission and Gnit. He is a Residency Five Fellow at Signature Theatre in New York. His many awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Award, the Horton Foote Prize and the first-ever Marian Seldes/Garson Kanin Fellowship by the Theater Hall of Fame.
“An anarchic and deliciously clever play.” – Huffington Post
This wildly funny and subversive take on the archetypal family drama is dense with authentic feeling and pain and it ultimately evolves into something haunted and mysterious and grand, even hopeful. The Open House won a Drama Desk Award, the 2014 Obie Award for Playwriting and the 2014 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. It was on the Top Ten Plays of 2014 lists of TIME magazine, Time Out New York and the NY Daily News.
Will Eno is the author of The Realistic Joneses and Thom Pain (based on nothing) , which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Other works include Middletown, The Flu Season, a tragedy, Intermission and Gnit. He is a Residency Five Fellow at Signature Theatre in New York. His many awards include the PEN/Laura Pels Award, the Horton Foote Prize and the first-ever Marian Seldes/Garson Kanin Fellowship by the Theater Hall of Fame.
64 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 3, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 1, 2026
The Open House is the kind of play that greets you at the door with a polite smile, offers you a seat, and then quietly rearranges the furniture while you’re still sitting in it. It starts as a family drama — or at least something wearing the costume of one — and then proceeds to molt, shed, and regenerate itself with the calm confidence of a creature that knows you won’t leave even if you’re confused. It’s the theatrical version of watching a family photo album where the faces keep changing but the poses stay the same.
What I loved most is how the play treats identity as a kind of communal coat rack. Characters wander in, hang up their grievances, pick up someone else’s tone, and continue as if nothing happened. The effect is hilarious in that very Eno way — the humor of people trying to behave properly while the ground beneath them quietly rotates. It’s absurd, but not loudly so; the absurdity is polite, well-mannered, almost apologetic, which somehow makes it even funnier. You don’t laugh at the chaos; you laugh because the chaos is so calmly convinced of its own logic. The replacements feel less like a trick and more like a reminder that life keeps cycling forward, swapping players but keeping the same strange choreography.
By the end, the house feels more alive than the people in it, and the people feel like temporary guests in their own roles. It’s a play that starts with a family and ends with a kind of theatrical ecosystem, where everyone is replaceable and everything is strangely hopeful. Eno doesn’t break the fourth wall — he just quietly swaps it out for a different one when you’re not looking. A sharp, sly, and wonderfully disorienting piece of theatre.
What I loved most is how the play treats identity as a kind of communal coat rack. Characters wander in, hang up their grievances, pick up someone else’s tone, and continue as if nothing happened. The effect is hilarious in that very Eno way — the humor of people trying to behave properly while the ground beneath them quietly rotates. It’s absurd, but not loudly so; the absurdity is polite, well-mannered, almost apologetic, which somehow makes it even funnier. You don’t laugh at the chaos; you laugh because the chaos is so calmly convinced of its own logic. The replacements feel less like a trick and more like a reminder that life keeps cycling forward, swapping players but keeping the same strange choreography.
By the end, the house feels more alive than the people in it, and the people feel like temporary guests in their own roles. It’s a play that starts with a family and ends with a kind of theatrical ecosystem, where everyone is replaceable and everything is strangely hopeful. Eno doesn’t break the fourth wall — he just quietly swaps it out for a different one when you’re not looking. A sharp, sly, and wonderfully disorienting piece of theatre.
December 1, 2019
intriguing concept. would love to see it performed
August 3, 2019
Now, I'm not sure if I liked this play as a whole, but I am very intrigued by the concept and I think it would be more powerful realized. The blue print of the script is well rendered, but...I don't think the power is in the words in the script. I have worked with a lot of aging people with disabilities and infirmities, and the father character is designed perfectly. I don't know how such a unlikable character works on stage, but...again, this play is fascinating enough that I would have to see it produced. I appreciated the care that the playwright put into the stage directions, and begging producers to keep it simple in order to evoke varied responses to what the meaning of the whole play is. I also like that it pushes the form of using double-casting to further push the meaning of the play (from the production notes from the playwright): "When Anna, played by the actress who plays Daughter, enters, this is the beginning of a profound transformation, though it should begin slyly and quietly. That is, she should not charge in and immediately start transforming the room. In the Signature Theatre production, we used some magic battery-powered fake falowers that bloomed over the course of the last half-hour of the play. I'm sure many people did not notice this, but I mention it because I think attention to little details like this, thing that slowly and almost unnoticeably accumulate, so that by the end of the play, the audience is looking at a different room filled with different people, can make for a very powerful experience."
I found one decent monologue for a woman in the piece, but the scenes are comprised of a lot of people, so...there isn't a lot of scene work for competition pieces, but...scene work for productions should be very satisfying for all involved.
I found one decent monologue for a woman in the piece, but the scenes are comprised of a lot of people, so...there isn't a lot of scene work for competition pieces, but...scene work for productions should be very satisfying for all involved.
October 14, 2024
The second Eno play I've read. Loved it. He has a real penchant for incredibly funny dialog that never reads as too cool or snarky, and yet these are characters who have often been through it and don't mince words. Here we have a rumination on.. not so much individual but generational mortality?... as seen through the lens of one family's real estate open house as they usher their declining father onto, ahem, the next step. So many quotable lines in this one, many of them hilarious, many of them harrowing, but the two of the latter class that definitely stick with me the most:
"Houses don't actually settle. It's more the earth rising around them."
"You come, you go, you were never really here."
"Houses don't actually settle. It's more the earth rising around them."
"You come, you go, you were never really here."
December 21, 2019
This is a fascinating, elliptical portrait of human relationships with others and with our living spaces. Father, who is suffering from physical and mental problems, has put his house on the market and forgotten it. During a family weekend, the family home is visited by his children, the real estate agent, some workers there to prepare the house for sale and a couple looking for a new home--all played by the same five actors.
July 16, 2023
Eno, as always, does a fantastic job of creating an atmosphere that feels at the same time familiar and unsettling. The first half of the play focusing on the family was almost anxiety-inducing to read because it really encapsulated what it is like existing in a family that love each other but have really had a tough go of it, something I can definitely relate to. The script leaves a lot of room for a theatre company to really play around and find some truly magical moments.
January 18, 2018
brilliant retake on the classic family drama. leaving just enough space for people to draw their own conclusions to the true meaning and feeling of this play. reading it was just as great as learning about all the different takes of this play.
June 28, 2017
Kind of boring and senseless. Most of the audience slept through the reading I attended.
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January 26, 2022It’d be a fascinating exercise to try and figure out how to say some of this dialogue like a human being
February 27, 2015
A clever little play about a dysfunctional family. A cutting and sarcastic father in a wheelchair lashes out at his blandly pleasant wife, his quietly sad brother, and his two numbly resigned adult children, who are visiting for their parent's wedding anniversary. For a least half of the piece, there's little action apart from the hilariously acid barbs. ("How many times do I have to ask you to never think about this family?" "Do you really have to say things? Would the world stop?")
Though it starts out as an ordinary family drama, it takes an interesting turn in the second half. After the children and uncle leave for various errands, a realtor shows up - the father has begun the process to sell the house without telling anyone - and today is the open house.
As new people come in, the father becomes increasingly marginalized and confused - and his previous power diminishes. The realtor, the painter, the prospective buyer, are all familiar - more functional, self-possessed versions of those that have left. The author uses doubled actors in a pointed, refreshing way.
This was a really enjoyable, funny, impactful show and I was glad to see that it stands as interesting literature.
Though it starts out as an ordinary family drama, it takes an interesting turn in the second half. After the children and uncle leave for various errands, a realtor shows up - the father has begun the process to sell the house without telling anyone - and today is the open house.
As new people come in, the father becomes increasingly marginalized and confused - and his previous power diminishes. The realtor, the painter, the prospective buyer, are all familiar - more functional, self-possessed versions of those that have left. The author uses doubled actors in a pointed, refreshing way.
This was a really enjoyable, funny, impactful show and I was glad to see that it stands as interesting literature.
October 23, 2015
Starts off rough, but eventually turns into a truly moving piece of white magic. Shades of Tao Lin, Endgame, and The Winter's Tale.
July 4, 2015
A slight play, somewhat reminiscent of early Albee one-acts, but has some clever, funny lines and an interesting structure.
June 18, 2016
One of my favorite individual plays of Will Eno's since Thom Paine (based in nothing)
November 8, 2021
I enjoyed my time reading this play. I like the concept but I'm not sure how it would translate to live performance. Would be interested to see.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews