Review: Goodman production of ‘Holiday’ is a respectful adaptation of 1928 original that also feels fresh

The phrase “adaptation” can have so many meanings when it comes to plays that the description communicates little.

Sure, when a stage adaptation comes from a novel, we know it’s a transposition of form at a minimum, requiring a creative leap but with highly varying degrees of faithfulness. When the source play was written in a foreign language, “adapted by” usually means the translator has gone beyond just line-by-line conversion into English, but sometimes very little, sometimes a whole lot.

With the amiable, elevated Goodman production of “Holiday,” though, we get something that seems extremely rare: a well-known title — produced four times previously by the Goodman and remembered fondly by screwball comedy buffs for the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn film version — that is truly, aggressively and yet still respectfully “adapted” from the Philip Barry 1928 original by Richard Greenberg. (Thank the expiration of the play’s copyright, which spurred the Barry estate to commission something sufficiently original to be a newly protected, authorized version.)

You might say Greenberg, the uber-talented author of “Take Me Out,” “Three Days of Rain” and many more witty, sophisticated plays, who so sadly passed away last year at the age of 67, kept the structure but took it down to the studs.

This is a faithful re-creation of Barry’s story. Long-orphaned, up-from-nothing lawyer Johnny Case (Luigi Sottile) discovers that his new fiancée Julia Seton (Molly Griggs) comes from “those Setons,” an extremely wealthy old-money family living in a New York City mansion. A battle of values ensues: Johnny declares his intention to take a “holiday” from work after earning his first significant pile of cash, which an upcoming deal will accomplish. He wants to pursue happiness, even if he doesn’t yet know the details. Yes, he wants money, but not “too much.”

Julia is baffled, as is her high-expectation father Edward (Jordan Lage). But Julia’s siblings, freer-spirited older sister Linda (Bryce Gangel) and oft-intoxicated younger brother Ned (Wesley Taylor), take Johnny’s side.

That synopsis applies to both the Barry and Greenberg versions. But this is far more than a straightforward updating to contemporary times, from just pre-Depression to just pre-pandemic.

The dialogue is nearly all Greenberg’s. It has his rhythm, wit, edge, voice. If this does go to Broadway — there are aspirations — watch out for an intriguing debate about whether this qualifies as a revival or a new play.

As directed by the Goodman’s former longtime leader Robert Falls, “Holiday” feels fresh, bereft of mothballs. Walt Spangler’s beautiful set design brings both the fully realized slickness of a quiet-luxury living room and the immersive, nostalgic dreaminess of a childhood playroom. The characters and the themes are familiar, but newly explored and enriched.

The most compelling performances here come from the actors playing the born-rich Seton siblings, as Greenberg has fleshed them out so completely. After all, he was once labeled, in a New York Times headline, as the “bard of American privilege.”

Griggs’ modern-day Julia has the compelling confidence of her father, who has invested in her wellness startup, but she also wonders whether she’s “an uncaring control freak.” (Her brother assures her she’s not uncaring.)

In Gangel’s deeply drawn depiction, Linda — who works with kids and has moved to Brooklyn — feels everyone’s wounds, especially her late mother’s, but her desire to “save” Julia from their father’s influence brings a response both fair and unfair at once: “What’s more privileged,” Julia asks her in an accusatory mode, “than being sad about being privileged?”

Ned is … well, right out of a Richard Greenberg play, and yet so much of him was there in Barry’s work too. Here he’s gay (which he probably was before but now it can be said) and Taylor delivers his emotional vulnerability with wit so droll that Ned comes across as so lovable and needy that Linda’s devotion to him — her co-dependence causes her to return to the house just to make sure he’s OK — feels utterly justifiable.

The weakness in this new “Holiday” is that Johnny is perhaps too much just the same as he always was, but blander. His belief that hard work and accumulation of wealth are means and not ends remains as relevant as ever, but that point of view, while contrary, isn’t nearly as surprising. Maybe the character doesn’t require updating the way the women, or the addict, do, but at least in Sottile’s take, he now comes off as flat amid a group of siblings who are fully dimensional.