Sparks Fly
Enid Graham has appeared as an actress in high-profile projects like HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" and "Mare of Easttown." "Smoke" will be her first professionally-produced play. Photos by Scott Elmquist
Originally published by Style Weekly
by David Timberline
May 20, 2025
Cadence premieres “Smoke,” a dark comedy written by Tony Award-nominated Enid Graham.
Enid Graham is a Tony Award-nominated actress who has starred in high-profile projects like “Boardwalk Empire” and “Mare of Easttown.” But back in 1992, she had just graduated from Juilliard and was hungry for her first professional gig.
She found it in Richmond, cast as Myrtle Mae in a production of “Harvey” at TheatreVirginia, the former League of Resident Theatres (LORT) company that would close 10 years later.
“I was so excited to get my first professional job, you know?” Graham says. “It was such a big deal to travel somewhere and get to work with other equity actors.” She got good notices, too, the Times-Dispatch saying, “Ms. Graham creates a Myrtle Mae full of nice surprises.”
Graham returns to Richmond this month, this time for the first professional staging of something she’s written. Cadence Theatre will premiere her 2022 play “Smoke” on May 23.
“I had forgotten how beautiful [Richmond] is,” she says. “And also how cool it is. There are so many cool restaurants and shops.”
“Smoke” represents a career expansion for Graham that she pursued almost by accident. “I was an actor for many years exclusively,” she says. “Then a friend of mine invited me to join a fiction writing group. I thought I’d give it a try and I just fell in love with it.”
Her new-found love ultimately led her back to Juilliard where she enrolled in a graduate playwriting program. There, one of her professors was Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire who ultimately connected the dots to Cadence.
“We were visiting with Chris and David over the holidays,” says Anna Senechal Johnson, Cadence’s artistic director. Johnson has been friends with Lindsay-Abaire since they attended Sarah Lawrence together and his wife, Chris, served on the Cadence board of directors.
A group photo (from left) Adam Turck, Kendall Walker, Maggie Horan, John Mincks, Gordon Bass, Debra Wagoner, Laine Satterfield and Brian K. Landis.
“We intentionally held off on setting a show for the spring until after the election,” says Johnson. “I told David what we were looking for and he suggested this play written by one of his students. He said, ‘it’s hilarious and also very important. I think it’s right up your alley.’”
About the Lindsay-Abaire endorsement, Graham says, “Oh my god, it’s so flattering. He’s a really great writer and also really smart about helping writers with their scripts. He can say something like ‘ask yourself this question’ and it’ll be the best note you could ever get.”
“Smoke” tells the story of a cosmopolitan couple from New York arriving for a wedding at a rented McMansion where different political viewpoints among family members bubble up into conflict. “My play starts out with a typical scenario that is very recognizable,” says Graham. “Then it kind of turns into a bit more of a wild ride.”
Graham won’t divulge any spoilers but the play is being promoted as “a comedy of horrors.”
While politics definitely underlie the tension, Johnson asserts that the play is far from preachy. “It’s about what can happen when you bring a family together at a destination wedding,” she says. “The beauty of it is that [Graham] doesn’t make any judgment about the characters. She just lets the scenario unfold.”
Laine Satterfield and Gordon Bass in Cadence Theatre’s “Smoke.”
Johnson says Graham gives the actors in “Smoke” great material to work with, something she attributes to Graham’s long career on stage and screen. “I just love actors,” says Graham. “And I can’t help but think like one. When I’m writing, I trust my instinct, thinking ‘would this be fun to play? What would be satisfying for me?’”
While this is the first professional staging of “Smoke,” Johnson shies away from using the “world premiere” label. “I would consider it more of a developmental premiere,” she says. “We want to give [Graham] an opportunity to see it and say ‘I love this, nothing needs to be changed’ or ‘Well, I really want to expand on that scene.’”
“The play’s so good, it would be great for her to get in at a big regional theater,” Johnson continues. “But, in the meantime, we’re so proud to be able to share this story and we’re fully invested in it.”
Cadence’s “Smoke” will run at Firehouse Theatre, 1609 West Broad St. from May 23 to June 7. Tickets and information available at https://cadencetheatre.org/.