Why This Playwright Can’t Quit His Family of Anxious Liberals

It was September 2020, and after 10 years, four in-person plays and three pandemic-era virtual installments, the playwright Richard Nelson truly thought he had finished with the Apple family, the mainstays of his politically attuned Rhinebeck play series.

But then Donald Trump was elected to a second term, and Nelson realized he wanted to hear from the Apples again.

So when Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater in Manhattan, which had produced the previous Apple family plays, asked him last summer if he had a new play, he suggested bringing the Apples back.

“He said yes, right away,” Nelson, 76, told me in late September at the Public. Rehearsals for that play, “We’ll See,” were scheduled to begin the next day. Set on the night of the 2026 midterm elections, it is slated to open this Election Day, Nov. 3.

“It’s like a family reunion,” Nelson said of the cast. Four of the five actors are reprising their roles from previous installments, including the married stars Jay O. Sanders, 73, and Maryann Plunkett, 73, who play siblings.