The Ask
What ultimately makes "The Ask" worthwhile is its recognition that generational conflict on the left cannot be reduced to a contest between enlightened youth and benighted elders, or between principled veterans and fashionable newcomers. Greta has advantages that Tanner does not, but Tanner also belongs to a professional and cultural world that Greta increasingly struggles to understand. Each generation can mistake its own vocabulary for the natural language of justice; each can become so absorbed in correcting the other that it loses sight of the common commitments that made the argument possible. Freeman’s play is especially resonant in a country where enormous intergenerational transfers of wealth are anticipated even as older Americans continue to exercise considerable influence over the institutions their heirs will eventually inherit. [more]