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In a career spanning nearly three decades, Kate Barry has brought others’ stories to the screen for the likes of HBO, Netflix and Apple TV.
After the Emmy-nominated writer and producer’s previous projects delved into troubled pop princess Britney Spears, soccer star Megan Rapinoe and the Gilgo Beach serial killings, Barry is taking on a far more personal subject — her own family — in “Kate, Allie and the ’86 Mets.”
“It is sort of a love letter,” she said of the one-woman play, which will launch a seven-show run Nov. 5 at Asylum NYC, an Off-Broadway theater in Manhattan.
From the opening words of “Long Island, Summer 1986,” the 48-year-old Long Island native takes audiences back 40 years to her childhood in Setauket, when two newly divorced mothers — her own mom, Grace, and a close family friend, Dorothy — combined their households and four children.
The arrangement grew out of the friendship between the mothers and their two daughters, who were the same age.
“I had my best friend all the time and we were going camping, and we were in the pool and we were painting our house — every day felt like an adventure,” Barry said. “Dorothy, in a way, brought with her the magic of that summer.”
The play’s title is a nod to Dorothy’s devoted Mets fandom and the 1980s CBS sitcom “Kate & Allie,” which centered on two divorced women moving in together and raising their children in a Greenwich Village brownstone.
The show, which ran for six seasons from 1984 through 1989, starred Susan Saint James as Kate McArdle and Jane Curtin as Allie Lowell.
And just as on television, Grace and Dorothy described themselves as best friends.
“It was easy to say, ‘Oh, when I was 8 and my little brother was 4, my mom and her best friend moved in together like the show ‘Kate & Allie’ and everyone was like, ‘Oh, ok,’” Barry said. “It was a very easy reference point.”
More than just best friends
It was only in recent years, Barry said, that her mother told her for the first time “that there was something more” to her relationship with Dorothy than “two best friends making it work.”
Forty years after their families moved in together, Grace, now 73, and Dorothy, 78, still live in the same Setauket house.
“For me, finding out that there was a real love, that was a real gift,” Barry said.
Bringing their story to the stage
The play premiered in November 2024 at the Gotham Storytelling Festival, followed by performances in Dublin, where Barry lives part-time, and a 23-show run last year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.
Barry first tested the story in front of her younger brother, Dan, a musician and actor.
“I did it for him and his reaction made me feel like, ‘Ok, I have done the right thing here,’” she said.
After the Gotham Storytelling Festival premiere, Barry asked Grace and Dorothy how they wanted to see “Kate, Allie and the ’86 Mets” for the first time. The three women ended up at a rehearsal studio near Barry’s home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“They just wanted to see it, just the two of them first,” she said. “That was huge for me to make sure that they were proud of the story and the way it was being told.”
Barry said her two moms are “really excited” about seeing the story performed in front of an audience.
“They’re bringing all of their friends from Long Island, who are also talked about in the show, to see the show for the first time,” she said. “I am most looking forward to that performance.”
She hopes the New York City run also draws classmates from Ward Melville High School, along with the family of Sherry Coben, the writer who created “Kate & Allie.”
Barry is now working on a screenplay version of “Kate, Allie and the ’86 Mets.”
The takeaway for audiences from the tale of her two moms, Barry said, is a four-letter word.
“I feel that everyone should be able to be who they are, love who they love and love how they love,” she said.
“Love is something we should protect, love is to be protected.”
If you go
“Kate, Allie and the ’86 Mets” will run Nov. 5-10 at Asylum NYC, 123 E. 24th St. in Manhattan.
Tickets and showtime information are available on the theater’s website.
Top: Kate Barry looks through childhood photographs at her Long Island home, revisiting memories that inspired her Off-Broadway play. (Credit: GLI/Andrew Theodorakis)
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