Paul Dano

“The first time we did a read-through with all of us, I was looking forward to it, but I was actually overcome with emotion,” said Josh Hamilton, the 38-year-old theater vet and indie movie star, who was discussing his role as Teddy in The New Group’s production Things We Want, directed by Ethan Hawke and currently being staged at the Acorn on Theatre Row.

While lounging on a frumpy couch backstage, Mr. Hamilton cradled a cup of tea and explained that he first met playwright Jonathan Marc Sherman nearly two decades ago, when they were just teenagers, on the same block as the Acorn. Mr. Hamilton played Mr. Sherman’s alter ego in the successful play Women and Wallace, and the pair (who look oddly alike with their winning grins and rich, brown eyes) would later form the Malaparte Theater Company with Ethan Hawke. After a nearly decade-long hiatus due to marriages, movie roles and, in Mr. Sherman’s case, alcoholism, the trio are working together for the first time in nearly a decade. “Reconvening all of us as adults now has been oddly emotional for me in a really nice way,” Mr. Hamilton said.  read more »

In Ethan Hawke-directed Things We Want, puffy-pouted Paul Dano plays angsty younger bro to Josh Hamilton and Peter Dinklage. Next up, co-starring with Daniel Day Lewis. Could someone turn the light on?  read more »

“I’m totally getting my ass kicked,” said Paul Dano, the 23-year-old actor best known as the brooding, Nietzsche-obsessed older brother in last year's Little Miss Sunshine. “But in a very good way,” he added, discussing his role as Charlie, a heartbroken college dropout, in the Ethan-Hawke directed, off-broadway play Things We Want currently in previews at The Acorn Theater.

Mr. Dano’s character is one-third of a trio of brothers in The New Group production. They’re forced to live together in their childhood apartment as lost adults, slugging whiskey shots, quoting Pinocchio, threatening to jump out windows and desperately searching for the things that will make them happy. Teddy (played by theater vet Josh Hamilton) seeks the answers through a guru known as "Mr. Miracle," while Sty (The Station Agent's Peter Dinklage) numbs himself with alcohol. Charlie is preoccupied with his “heartbreakdown,” which happened after his girlfriend, Zelda, broke up with him and he dropped out of culinary school.

“What’s frightening about Charlie is that there are definitely some things that happen to him that I can relate to, in a personal way,” Mr. Dano explained. “It’s much harder to play somebody who does hit close to home. That was definitely what attracted me to Charlie and that’s definitely the challenge that I’m facing right now.”

"I think there’s an honesty in Charlie, I think there’s an honesty in the writing too. This is a modern play, it’s a new play and it’s not like presentational theater or something. It’s pretty realistic. I just think Jonathan’s writing is an amazing combination of darkness and humor. I think there is a lot of uncomfortable laughs, I can relate to that."

Read more about Paul Dano in his new play Things We Want in next week's issue of the Observer, out on Oct. 31. Check here for tickets to the show.