Jess Barbagallo, Lena Engelstein and Layla Khoshnoudi to Star in ADULT RELATIONSHIPS at The Tank
Performances will run from November 1-21.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Sep. 22, 2025
The Tank will present the World Premiere of Adult Relationships by Ben Gassman and directed by Tara Elliott. Adult Relationships will run Saturday, November 1 through Friday, November 21 at The Collapsable Hole.
The cast of Adult Relationships will include Jess Barbagallo (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Lena Engelstein (Friday Night Rat Catchers), and Layla Khoshnoudi (Dance Nation).
Adult Relationships will feature Scenic Design by Cate McCrea (The Good John Proctor), Costume Design by Normandy Sherwood (PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE), Lighting Design by Alejandro Fajardo (La Calisto), and Sound Design by Johnny Gasper (Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods). Iman Louise-Jeune will serve as the Production Manager, with Olivia Mermagen serving as the Stage Manager.
Adult Relationships is produced by Meucci & Bell (Jess Barbagallo, Tara Elliott, Ben Gassman & Layla Khoshnoudi, Core Artists) in association with The Tank (Meghan Finn, Artistic Director; Johnny G. Lloyd, Director of Artistic Development) and Immediate Medium (JJ Lind, Artistic Director). Meucci & Bell was formed during the development of Botte di Ferro, a site-specific play presented behind a Covid- shuttered restaurant in Red Hook in summer 2021. The core artists have reunited to create this searching, spiritual sequel, which takes Botte di Ferro’s central characters and spits them into middle age.
A dark comedy that starts at a wake and ends with a cough, Adult Relationships is a new play with movement that brings together ex-lovers, Negeen (Persian, culturally Muslim) and Noah (white, culturally Jewish) at the memorial of their troubled friend, Haris (born in ex-Yugoslavia, self-identified as Catholic, but it’s complicated). Over the course of one evening, Negeen and Noah reckon with the person they’ve lost, the people they've become, and the versions of each other they are seeking to rediscover.
Haris had what we might call a “love language” of hate speech. Though only present in voicemails, his voice carries the threat of violence. Through the prism of his intrusion the subtle sticky tensions of ethnic and religious difference are tangled into a larger erotic tug of war. It's a two-hander with a third wheel dancer whose choreography tugs the naturalistic language into a surreal landscape. Density, difference, danger, possibility. Dark, but a comedy.
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