If anything, he is The Singing Birthday Telegram From Hell— Festen ’s festering first-born son who suddenly surfaces on his home turf to salute his father’s 60th birthday. Unfortunately, the prodigal has problems, and his sense of celebration is a little off—like flinging on the family dining table, which seats 13 but none comfortably, a skeleton from the closet and picking at it incessantly every chance he gets. It makes for a rough first-course, and there are other courses and another act. Every time Hayden takes drink in hand to make a toast, cast and audience alike grip their chairs for the fallout.

Only Broadway’s Sweeney Todd would find this a lighthearted evening in the theatre. Indeed, as he entered the play’s after-party, held in the much more convivial after-glow of Tavern on the Green, Michael Cerveris cracked, “And I thought our show was dark!”

And where better than a tavern to repair after the brawl-in-the-family donnybrook the first-nighters had just witnessed? Despite the bruising Big Issues at the heart of the play, there was an inordinate amount of laughs provoked by dysfunction taken at full gallop.

Wouldn’t you know Ali MacGraw would know how to dress for her first Broadway opening night party? You just didn’t know she would have one. Nor did she. This is her first time on a stage—any stage—since kindergarden (“I was an autumn leaf once—one of those little kids that lands with a thud at the back of the auditorium and the stage shakes.”)

MacGraw was Elegance Concentrate, standing in the press line in what could only be called a star stance—stiletto heels stylishly crossed, black top, red pants—“just Chinese trousers and a Chinese shirt made by my friend, Pat Donovan. It’s my favorite piece of clothing so I was going to wear it whether it was the right thing or not—for good luck.”

She was obviously relieved to be beyond her Broadway bow, and color was returning. “Did you like it?” she asked a scribe under her breath. “You can say no. I won’t tell anyone.”

Two of her three children on stage are also marking their Broadway debuts, both arriving via TV: “ER’s” Emmy-winning Julianna Margulies (who has done Off-Broadway before) and “Six Feet Under’s” Jeremy Sisto (who did theatre in L.A. and Chicago).

“I’m glad this week is over—it has been a stressful week,” admitted Sisto, his mother’s son even after the curtain has come down. He plays the boorish brother and does it with an uncharted, unpredictable, animalistic walk. “I don’t walk like that normally—unless I’m feeling really insecure.” He liked the idea that he can continue the quest for his character every night. “I’m excited about finding it over and over. Some nights, you’re looking for it and you’re finding it as you go along. Then, some nights—well, y’know.”

Miraculously, amid the chaos, there is an on-stage dinner break where the craziness and all talk come to a halt so the cast can actually eat. “When it’s salmon, I’m in heaven because I love salmon,” said Margulies. “Usually, it’s chicken. But last Thursday pork popped up on our plates, and some of us aren’t supposed to eat pork. I have the little girl on my lap, and I feed her mostly. But an actor prepares: I always go on that stage hungry.”

The inestimable Larry Bryggman has the tall order of making the ogre at the head of the table a recognizable human being. “That was the only reason I did this,” he confessed. “In the beginning I didn’t feel I really could. I kinda was put off it. Then I talked to a few people and read it a few more times and thought, ‘Okay, maybe something can be done. I’ll give it a shot.’ I hope I did it well because there are lot of people like that walking around out there. This has been a deep experience—and painful when I’ve been working with the material. I have young children, which makes it even more immediate to me.”

No, he did not see—or want to see— Festen as a film (called “The Celebration” in the U.S.), a 1998 Danish indelicacy directed and co-written by Thomas Vinterberg which embraced the no-frills/fadeouts/film-music approach of the Dogme movie movement.

“We had a DVD sitting there the whole time on the stage manager’s desk,” remembered Bryggman. “He said, ‘Do you want to see it? Go ahead and watch it because it’s so different.’ But I never wanted to because I never want to know how other actors do my role.”

When producer Marla Rubin saw the movie, she saw a play and spent several years intricately negotiating the stage rights with the Dogme top-dogs. Festen ’s hit status in London confirmed her vision, and she plans to turn more Dogme movies into stage plays. Two by the movement’s main man, Lars von Trier —2003’s “Dogville” and 2005’s “Mandalay”—already seem stage-ready, being tales of a Rocky Mountain village of the ‘30s which were shot on a huge soundstage with fake fronts and chalked-off streets and alleys. "The sequel especially intrigues me," she said.

Clearly, the hand-held camera chaos of the film needed a different kind of stage language, and Rubin tapped adapter David Eldridge and director Rufus Norris to come up with a highly theatrical equivalent, which they did in spades—enough to convince showman Bill Kenwright to come aboard with more moneybags. He had no choice, as he now sees it.

“My favorite line ever—in anything I’ve ever produced—is in Stephen Sondheim ’s Passion where Fosca says, ‘Loving you is not a choice. It’s who I am.’ When people see Festen and say, ‘Why did you do it?’, I say, ‘I had no choice. It’s who I am.’ If I don’t want to produce something like Festen , I have no right to call myself a producer. ‘If it’s there, build it, and they will come.’ When do you hear concentration like that in a theatre? There’s no greater gift in the world than to make an audience think! I love silence in the theatre. In this particular play, there’s that wonderful moment of complete silence—a four-minute pause that could go on for ten minutes. I think it’s pretty near perfect.”

Next up for Kenwright—like April 11— Dame Judi Dench will open in his revival of Hay Fever at the Haymarket. “She should have opened last Thursday, but she has been ill. She’s to be back in rehearsals tomorrow, and the plan is she will open on Tuesday.” After that, he’ll rehire director Norris to redo Cabaret and he will open it in London Sept. 26.

April 11 is pretty important to Norris and Eldridge, too. That’s when they put into rehearsal their next opus, The Market Boys , at the National. “It’s about growing up in a big East End market in the ‘80s in the time of Thatcher,” says the 41-year-old Norris.

The director had only kind words for his American cast. “They were very hard-working, very applied. Fantastic sense of humor, knocking around. And they take no prisoners.

“One way I could have directed this would have been to come in and go, ‘Hey, guys, I’ve done this before. You stand there, and you stand there.’ I have no interest in doing that, personally—but, even if I had had that interest, there would have been a couple of them who would have put me straight immediately. ‘Thank you very much, but we’re going to make it ours'. And that’s exactly what I wanted.”