Bruised Egos

On a Sunday in mid-April, previewed his latest play to a small group that had assembled at Urban Stages. I sat in the second row, behind the playwright’s father, Moshe Safdie, and the critic Paul Goldberger, with not much space between them and the thespian quartet on whom Facade is centered. The script is concerned with the implosion of a friendship and the two architect couples who come to verbal blows after one pair demolishes the other’s building to make way for their own. Sound familiar? Safdie clarified after the reading that the scenario was “inspired by, not based on” the leveling of the Folk Art Museum in 2014 by its landlord, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which aggressively pursued a westward expansion of its galleries (completed in 2019). The incident pitted Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, architects of the imperiled building, against Liz Diller and , whose firm oversaw the expansion project. The play gives them flimsy aliases and name-drops others in the industry certainly known to the elder Safdie. Goldberger even found himself thrown to the winds …