‘The City of Conversation,’ theater review

Politics and personal lives are inextricably — and wrenchingly — tangled in the topical and fast-moving drama The City of Conversation, premiering at Lincoln Center. Anthony Giardina’s window to the changing landscape of Washington, D.C., movers and shakers is Hester Ferris (played with smarts and passion by Jan Maxwell), a die-hard liberal hostess-with-the-mostest. The play unfolds over three decades, from the Carter years to the Obama inauguration, in the airy Georgetown townhouse Hester shares with her equally opinionated but quieter widowed sister Jean (Beth Dixon). The home is Hester’s arena for entertaining — and for championing left-leaning beliefs. She meets her match when her son Colin (a dynamic Michael Simpson), returns from the London School of Economics with his girlfriend Anna (Kristen Bush). Anna is pretty, blond, and like Colin, conservative. But unlike him she’s ambitious on an All About Eve scale. Anna uses the visit to snag a job interview and to alienate Hester.