A young author takes a glamorous older woman to lunch and all does not go well in “The Luncheon” by Jeffrey Archer, performed by Jefferson Mays. And host Davis performs Amy Bloom’s touching story “Love is Not a Pie,” in which family secrets, and family bonds, are shared after a funeral.
Guest host Hope Davis presents two stories about rituals. “The Luncheon,” by Jeffrey Archer, is sly homage to a story by the same title by Somerset Maugham. In it, a young and ambitious novelist stubs his social toes badly in his attempt to impress a glamorous older woman. Archer is a prodigious author of bestselling thrillers and family sagas including the Kane and Abel series, the Clifton Chronicles and novels such asNot a Penny More, Not a Penny Less; Honour Among Thieves, Sons of Fortune and Heads You Win. His short stories collections include A Quiver Full of Arrows, from which “The Luncheon” comes, The Collected Short Stories; and Tell Tale. The story was exquisitely performed by Jefferson Mays at The Getty Center in Los Angeles. Mays received the 2004 Tony Award for his performance in the one-man play “I Am My Own Wife.” Additional Broadway credits include “Pygmalion,” “The Front Page,” “The Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” and “Oslo.” His film and television credits include “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” “Inherent Vice,” “The Americans,” “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” and the upcoming miniseries “One Day She'll Darken.”
Hope Davis performs our second story, Amy Bloom’s touching “Love is Not a Pie,” in which family secrets, and family bonds, are shared after a funeral. Bloom is the author of the novels Love Invents Us, Away,Lucky Us, and the acclaimed story collections Come to Me, which was a National Book Award finalist, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Where the God of Love Hangs Out. Bloom has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, O Magazine and Vogue, among many other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award for Fiction.
Hope Davis has appeared in the films “About Schmidt;” “American Splendor;” “Synecdoche, New York;” and “Captain America: Civil War,” among others. On television, Davis’s credits include “In Treatment;” “The Newsroom;” “The Special Relationship;” and recent recurring roles in the series “Allegiance,” “American Crime,” and “Wayward Pines.” Her theater credits include “Ivanov,” “Two Shakespearean Actors,” “Spinning Into Butter,” “Food Chain,” “Measure for Measure,” “God of Carnage,” for which she was nominated for a Tony Award, and “The Red Barn” at The National Theatre in London.
