Sandy Rustin (‘The Cottage’ playwright) satisfied a ‘creative itch’ to create a classic farce with feminist themes [Exclusive Video Interview]

Sam Eckmann
·4 min read
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“I was really looking to create something kind of in the style of Noel Coward, but with a feminist twist,” explains playwright Sandy Rustin of “The Cottage.” She took her first stab at the script for this riotous farce back in 2013 and spent a decade fine tuning the feminist comedy before her Broadway debut this season. Watch the exclusive video interview above.

The play begins with Sylvia (Laura Bell Bundy) and Beau (Eric McCormack) on an erotic escape to their cottage in the English countryside. The audience soon discovers that the pair are not married, and instead having a wild affair. But Sylvia winds up questioning her views on marriage and social status when the deceived spouses arrive at the house with affairs of their own. Given the homage to classic madcap Coward scripts, a murderous ex-lover is also headed to the cottage to stir up some tension (and some great physical comedy).

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“I was really writing something that I would want to be in. I was sort of scratching that creative itch for myself,” admits Rustin, who is also an actor. Her desire to create quality female characters certainly worked. The show lured Tony nominee Bundy back to Broadway for the first time in 15 years, gave reliable comedic player Lilli Cooper some juicy physical bits to chew on, and introduced audiences to breakout scene stealer Dana Steingold. Rustin believes that being a new mom when she wrote the first draft helped create the dynamic women in the script. “It really grew out of sort of a nursing mother’s desire to scratch that creative itch and something that felt authentic to me outside of motherhood at that time in my life,” she explains.

The script morphed many times in the decade-long lead up to Broadway, but one event led Rustin to unleash the feminist message underneath the zany comedic bits. “I would say the show took the biggest change in direction after Donald Trump was elected,” notes the writer, “And I felt like if I was going to have an opportunity to put something on a stage that was going to say something, I wanted to have it say something about the way women were being treated in our country still today. It was right around 2016 where I sort of started to really deepen those themes within the play.” We can clearly see these effects in the way that Sylvia is two-timed and feels the loss of control in her world, yet learns to remake herself in unexpected ways.

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Rustin is also known for her highly successful stage adaptation of the cult classic “Clue.” That script became the third most produced play in the country during the 2022-2023 season, making Rustin one of the country’s most produced playwrights. “It’s just a remarkable opportunity to bring laughter to audiences all across the country,” she confesses. “I just felt so hopeless during the pandemic, and…we’re in a tricky political climate right now. And to be able to be a person who helps to generate laughter in our world, it feels like, I don’t know. It’s like the greatest gift.”

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