[7] It was produced in Los Angeles at the Geffen Playhouse, Westwood in May 1999, with direction by Gil Cates and starring Linda Lavin as Ruth and Samantha Mathis as Lisa.
[4] The West End premiere opened in November 1999 and closed February 5, 2000 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Helen Mirren as Ruth and Anne-Marie Duff as Lisa and directed by Howard Davies.
[11][12] In February 2013, Music Makers Productions [13] produced a site-specific version of the show at the Strand Bookstore's [14] Rare Books Room, starring Lisa Fernandez and Renée Petrofes.
[citation needed] Ben Brantley in his New York Times review of the 1998 production, wrote "... the emotional current between the performers takes on a sweeping, electric life of its own.
You find yourself paying less attention to the dialogue than to the finely graded code of gestures and vocal inflections with which these women chart the rise and fall of a friendship ... you may be hard pressed after the play ends to remember anything specific that Ms. Hagen's character has said.
You'll remember the way she holds her head back to keep the tears from rolling off her face ... and, above all, the elegiac poetry, equal parts defeatedness and hope, that Ms. Hagen brings to the basic act of bolting and unbolting a door in the play's final scene.