Anna Ziegler says people’s dissatisfaction with life inspires her writing

Throughout her adult life, American playwright and screenwriter Anna Ziegler has been fascinated by our inability to be satisfied with what we have in our lives, be it our careers, our relationships or generally, the life choices we have made.

“Many of us who live very blessed lives, overall, find it difficult to be happy with our blessings,” Ziegler (46) explains. “I feel like there’s this constant striving that [we] participate in and, for me, it’s a constant sadness that I’m not able to be content with my lot, which is really a very good one. And I think it’s true of several, if not all, of my friends.”

This theme has taken different forms in much of her work and one Ziegler revisits in The Wanderers which is now showing at the Marylebone Theatre, following a successful 2023 off-Broadway run starring Katie Holmes. Set in New York and directed by Igor Golyak (Our Class), this very Jewish play explores the complexities of two seemingly different Jewish marriages, across two different time periods.

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The present-day narrative focuses on secular couple Abe (Alexander Forsyth), a Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and his wife Sophie (Paksie Vernon), also a writer. Outwardly, they live a charmed existence, but Abe is struggling with his marriage and his legacy. When he begins an unexpected email correspondence with Julia (Anna Popplewell), a famous actress, he finds himself pulled into a connection that awakens something in him that he cannot quite explain. Meanwhile, Sophie tries to hold their marriage together while managing her own professional disappointments.

Several decades earlier, newly arranged married members of the Satmar community, Esther (Katerina Tannenbaum) and Schmuli (Eddie Toll) begin a life bound by traditional roles. But once Esther dares to imagine a life outside of their community and Schmuli struggles to cope with the patriarchal expectations of him, their relationship and quest for happiness are irreparably challenged.

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The inspiration behind The Wanderers was two-fold, Ziegler says, speaking over Zoom from a hotel room in Maine where she is on holiday with her two children. In 2016, Ziegler had been given an open commission by the Old Globe theatre in San Diego and, at the time, was pregnant with her second child. “I had two plays in mind and really wanted to turn in this commission before I had him in the September.

“One play was about an arranged marriage in the Hasidic community in Brooklyn and the other was loosely inspired by the flirtatious email correspondence between author Jonathan Safran Foer and Natalie Portman which had been published in the New York Times magazine that summer. “I’d been interested in writing about the tribulations in a contemporary marriage and the emails were a trigger, I guess. And as my deadline/due date grew closer, I started to suspect that I was writing one play. Although they were different relationships, they shared some similar themes about happiness, how hard it is to find what we’re looking for and just the sort of general hunt for meaning in our lives.”

Comparisons have been made between Abe’s character and Jonathan Safran Foer. Although Ziegler can appreciate why audiences might make that connection because of the email exchange, she is clear that Abe is her own creation.

“Obviously, they’re both very successful novelists – successful Jewish novelists – but I don’t know Jonathan Safran Foer, I’ve never seen him interviewed and don’t know what he’s like. Aside from reading some of his books and that communication with Natalie Portman, I don’t have a sense of him.”

Ziegler has said that when writing a play, she needs to love her characters in some way. Why is that? “Well, I guess the more precise thing is to say that you need to be really interested in them,” she replies. “And to be really interested in someone, there must be something that you’re drawn to in them. I think when you spend the amount of time you do writing these plays,” she breaks off, laughing, “that does turn into a kind of love, grudging admiration or affection. In this play, I really do have sympathy for all of them, I do.”

I tell Ziegler that from reading the play my sympathies lay with the two wives, whose lives fracture, largely because of their husbands’ actions, and that in particular, I found Abe to be deeply unlikeable. Ziegler gives another short laugh before disagreeing with me. “Though I understand that response to his character, I think he’s a lost person and very insecure. He has tried his best to live a normal life, despite the experience of traumatic events in his early years. I find his attempts to connect, even with Julia, to be sort of endearing.”

Ziegler’s work has been staged around the world and addresses wide-ranging topics from tennis (The Last Match) to adolescence and gender identity (Boy), but she is perhaps best known for Photograph 51, about British scientist Rosalind Franklin, who played a crucial role in the discovery of the structure of DNA. The West End production, which starred Nicole Kidman as Franklin, won the WhatsOnStage award for Best New Play in 2016 and the film version, set to begin shooting in spring 2026, will star Natalie Portman. Ziegler’s other forthcoming projects include an adaptation of Antigone, which will premiere in New York later this year, as well as another new play in London this winter; a two-hander about a stepmother and stepdaughter during the pandemic. All she can say about it is that it will run at a theatre she has always wanted to work at.

What Ziegler can be sure of is that The Wanderers will get people talking. “That’s been my experience [to date],” she says. “Men and women argue about whose side they’re on, what they think really happened and who is at fault. So, yeah, I hope that the British audience has the same experience.”

The Wanderers is at Marylebone Theatre until 29 November. marylebonetheatre.com

Click here to read Jewish News’ review of The Wanderers