'And So We Come Forth': Apple Family, I Just Can't Quit You.

LET’S PRETEND THERE’S a program for the newest streaming theater production from Richard Nelson,. It would say:

“And So We Come Forth: A Dinner on Zoom”

Where: Rhinebeck, N.Y. (three screens), and Brooklyn (one screen)

When: Early July 2020

A benefit for the Actors Fund (actorsfund.org)

Streaming on publictheater.org through Aug. 25, 2020

APPLES IN DEEP THOUGHT. Clockwise from top left, Jay O. Sanders and Maryann Plunkett as brother and sister, Sally Murphy as a writer left alone for the evening, Stephen Kunken as the writer’s significant other and Laila Robins as a teacher. They star in “And So We Come Forth,” the latest streaming Apple family play.

LIFE IS NOT EXACTLY back to normal in Rhinebeck, that charming, artsy hamlet a hundred miles north of New York City. The Apple family’s favorite Indian restaurant is open, but that basically means that it’s offering takeout. Only one couple was sitting at the outside tables.

We last saw the Apples, in their Zoom debut, “What Shall We Talk About?,” back in the spring, talking about coronavirus-centric topics like Gov. Andrew Cuomo and safe grocery shopping. Since then, New York State has made real progress in controlling the Covid-19 pandemic. The reopening of the economy is taking place in carefully structured stages, and the Apples, still not getting together in person, are reflecting on change.

(Unfortunately, the rest of the country — where apparently nobody took any precautions at all — is being decimated by the virus. And a physician-minister is telling video viewers that hydroxocholoroquine is a cure. Also, something about sex with demons?)

REAL LIFE. A street scene in Rhinebeck, N.Y.

But let’s get back to the sane people. The Apples are here again, in their respective domiciles. A sort-of-retired lawyer (Jay O. Sanders as Richard) staying with his sister, a teacher (Maryann Plunkett as Barb). Another teacher (Laila Robins as Marian) at home alone in front of her photo-studded bookcases. A writer (Sally Murphy as Jane) separated temporarily from her lover, an actor-restaurateur (Stephen Kunkel as Tim) while he’s staying over at his daughter’s apartment.

Life goes on. Richard (in photo) may be buying a house in nearby Livingston Manor. Marian seems to have attracted a gentleman caller, but he could just as easily be a stalker. Tim’s daughter has taken in some disturbed young woman friend, who now needs a place to live.

As in Nelson’s other plays — and as in real-life Zoom get-togethers — the conversation wanders off in a dozen directions. There’s Barb’s tainted memory of finding an arrowhead when she was a little girl, the story of the Apple grandmother visiting Harlem and being sure the man behind her was calling her “whitey,” and the current news of a young immigrant child who has nowhere to go while his aunt, suffering from Covid, is in the hospital.

Marian (Laila Robins) has a gentleman admirer. Or a stalker. It’s hard to know which.

If there’s a theme, it’s taking people in — or not. It’s just as much about people putting themselves back out in the world — or not. “People are starting to get out,” Tim observes at one point, but those people are ‘not as careful as me.”

Mostly “And So We Come Forth” (the title is from Dante’s “Inferno”) is about this extraordinary time — of pandemic, of isolation, of caution and entitlement, responsibility and fear.

“My God, we do adapt, don’t we?” Barb observes at one point.

“I have not touched another human being in over four months,” Marian says quietly.

And Jane asks, “What have we done to ourselves?”

No one is spelling out all the answers, but Nelson and his actors give us new angles for reflection. Which is most welcome in this season of sameness.