Three-time Tony nominee and Drama Desk winner Martha Plimpton has a regular gig on the small screen. As Eileen on ABC’s The Real O’Neals, Plimpton plays the head of the picture-perfect Catholic Chicago family: the O’Neals. In the pilot episode of the television series, now in its second season, each member of the family reveals a secret that threatens that image. Among them, Eileen and her husband want a divorce. Kenny, played by The Burnt Party Boys star Noah Galvin, is gay.
In the January 17 episode, “The Real Acceptance,” Kenny wants to break the news that he is in a relationship. Sean Grandillo, best known to Broadway audiences from his role in Deaf West’s Spring Awakening, plays boyfriend Brett. The episode opens with an original musical number in which Kenny tries to decide how to tell his family about his new relationship.
The episode was written by Josh Kirby and Jon Veles (who also wrote the song) and directed by Victor Nelli. Fred Fred Tallaksen choreographed. Produced by ABC studios, the show credits executive producers Casey Johnson, David Windsor, Stacy Traub, Dan Savage, Brian Pines, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Dan McDermott, and Todd Holland.
Galvin has appeared in numerous Off-Broadway productions at New York’s Signature Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, MCC, The Vineyard, The Public, The Culture Project, The Flea, The Wild Project, New York Theater Workshop, the Barrow Street Theater, Rattlestick, Ensemble Studio Theater, and more. Plimpton was nominated for a Tony for three consecutive years, beginning in 2007 with The Coast of Utopia, followed by Top Girls and Pal Joey. She won the Drama Desk for Featured Actress in a Play for The Coast of Utopia in 2007.
