Brownstein: Montreal has a chapter in witty raconteur Adam Gopnik's New York stories
His one-man show, a confessional, is called Adam Gopnik’s New York, exploring all facets of the award-winning New Yorker magazine writer’s life, from his fascination with Central Park to the city’s runaway rat population to his failed attempts at psychoanalysis — “the most unsuccessful in the history of therapy.”
But Gopnik’s adventure originates in Montreal, where the McGill University grad grew up and picked up a neurosis or two, not to mention a lifelong obsession with the Habs. Gopnik still insists: “Montreal is really my hometown.”
So it’s only fitting that the much-acclaimed Adam Gopnik’s New York — produced by Steve Martin and Tony Award winner James L. Nederlander — will hit town at the Segal Centre for a one-night stand on Sept. 8. Tickets go on sale Tuesday.
The show first opened to sold-out audiences at New York City’s Lincoln Center in 2025 and continues to draw full houses across North America and abroad. It played, sandwiched between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Othello, this past weekend at Ontario’s Stratford Festival with the title Talk Therapy — which was what Gopnik originally called the play.
“Adam Gopnik’s New York was meeting with a certain resistance from some Canadian bookers,” he says.
A 40-year staffer at the New Yorker with three National Magazine Awards and more than a dozen books to his credit, Gopnik brings overachievement to a whole new level. And with a handful of plays to his name, he has also become a much sought-after witty raconteur in the tradition of the late, great Spalding Gray.
Adam Gopnik’s New York came about as a result of his regular breakfast conversations with his longtime buddy Martin, who urged him to bring a collection of his life stories to the stage.
“I told Steve that, in fact, I had done a one-man show about my life, but he told me: ‘No, not a show where you try to be funny,’” Gopnik says in a phone interview from Stratford. “I thought it was a sort of reproach. He said: ‘You don’t do standup. I want you to do a one-man show where you leap from subject to subject, the way you do with me over our breakfasts. That’s what would be riveting.’
“All I could say was: ‘Really?’ He then said he’d love to produce it.”
So Gopnik and his filmmaker wife, Martha Parker, went to a nearby restaurant and wrote down 40 of his favourite riffs with crayons on the paper tablecloth. And the play eventually came together in his living room, with Parker and their daughter Olivia.
“Finally, I felt that I had something, based on my bizarre psychoanalysis in the ’90s — where I would put my elderly psychoanalyst to sleep. I told Steve and he said: ‘Great! Why don’t you come over to my apartment and do it for me and a couple of my friends?’”
Turns out Martin’s friends for this makeshift audition were Martin Short, John Mulaney, Lorne Michaels and — a Gopnik idol — Monty Pythoneer and pioneer Eric Idle.
“So there I am trying to present this show among these master entertainers. I was (on the verge of being nauseous), but I did it. And it worked. It was funny. What Steve had really meant is that it would be funny if I didn’t try to be.”
Gopnik was further instructed by famed Broadway actor Raúl Esparza, also in attendance, that success would come if he could “sculpt the piece for the stage.” So they spent five months working in a rehearsal studio, learning how to sculpt.
“It was an unimaginable education on the architecture of drama, and we tried it out at Lincoln Center. That led to the initial three-week run, and now I’m on the road with it. I feel like I’m the last of the vaudevillians. I just came from some shows in London. It’s been wild.”
Gopnik is delighted about bringing the play to his hometown.
“The show totally began from and is rooted in Montreal, from where Martha and I were getting on a bus from Montreal on our way to begin a new life in New York,” he says. “It’s all about two kids leaving Kansas to come to Oz. The show is also about importing Canadian values into New York, where you’re constantly bemused in a kind of Alice in Wonderland-like way by the absence of common sense in everyone you meet.”
Regardless of his acting commitments, Gopnik continues to write essays feverishly — on a vast range of subjects — for the New Yorker.
“These days, I’m compelled to write as seriously if not desperately about the transformation of America. That has been my consuming subject for a decade. But I still see my primary obligation as being able to entertain — not in the sense of diverting or escapism, but to delight in its attack. I see myself as a performer on the page. I genuinely love writing. That’s why I never wanted to be an academic.”
Unlike his parents.
Born in Philadelphia, Gopnik moved to Montreal when he was 11. His mother landed a teaching job at Université de Montréal before becoming a linguistics prof at McGill. His dad, also a professor, was dean of students at McGill for 20 years. Like Gopnik, his four sisters are McGill graduates.
Gopnik recalls how the family had caught Expo 67 and how they were smitten by Montreal, thus prompting the move. He also recalls the family reading Le Devoir and La Presse and all the kids going to French-speaking schools prior to McGill.
Gopnik’s fluent French was to come in handy at the New Yorker, which had him posted in Paris for six years and where he wrote the bestseller Paris to the Moon. He was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France in 2013, and in 2021 he was named a Chevalier in the Légion d’honneur “for being an interpreter of French civilization to Americans.”
But Gopnik likes to say he really learned French by listening to legendary Canadiens broadcaster René Lecavalier for the spoken word and reading Réjean Tremblay in La Presse for the written word.
Enough about New York and theatre and writing. Back to his ever-consuming love: hockey, and how he had fantasized about his beloved Habs going all the way this season after a 33-year Stanley Cup dry spell.
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“I’ve been a rabid Habs fan for 60 years and have now turned my son Luke into an equally crazed one. I’ve seen some of the best Canadiens teams over the ’70s and ’80s, but we’ve never had a more thrilling, exciting team to watch than this one. But I’m indignant because a team goes through this 82-game marathon schedule that rewards a certain kind of play. Then they stage this demolition derby in the playoffs, where all the skill, finesse and brilliance displayed all year gets literally beaten down. Lane Hutson is the single most gifted player with the most magical skills since Guy Lafleur, and there he is being clubbed over the head …”
Don’t get Gopnik started. Too late.
“Now I’m pumped for next season,” he says. “I’ve been trying to enthuse people in Stratford about a hockey musical. We’ve never had one before about how the Canadiens came into existence. Sadly, I’ve had no progress on that at Stratford.”
Not yet.
Adam Gopnik’s New York plays the Segal Centre on Sept. 8. Tickets cost $75 to $80 and will be available as of 9 a.m. Tuesday at 514-739-7944 or segalcentre.org.