'Cold War Choir Practice' Off-Broadway review — play with music shines brighter than an atomic blast
Read our review of Cold War Choir Practice off Broadway, a new play at MCC Theater that won writer Ro Reddick the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize in February.
Summary
- Cold War Choir Practice follows a 10-year-old American girl who finds herself in a world of espionage and more during the Cold War
- Playwright Ro Reddick and director Knud Adams skillfully balance the show's serious themes with its heightened and often silly plot
- The show succeeds in trusting the audience to go along with the show's wild ride
Cold War Choir Practice is the kind of buzzy Off-Broadway show that all but receives rave reviews before it opens. Fresh off productions in Clubbed Thumb’s 2025 Summerworks festival and at Providence’s Trinity Repertory Company, the play’s transfer to MCC Theater was highly anticipated by critics, artists, and the in-crowd of New York indie theatre. Such pre-opening plaudits can often spell trouble, Speak + Spell toy be damned, for shows whose footing slips in the messy process of recapturing the magic that propelled them to a bigger stage in the first place. Cold War Choir Practice has no such missteps. It's a little weird, a little campy, and so silly that its message of confronting and overcoming the enemy within is fed to you not like obligatory vegetables, but like a meal so rich you don’t notice it’s healthy.
Inspired by playwright Ro Reddick and her time in a peace-themed children’s choir, protagonist Meek (the wide-eyed Alana Raquel Bowers) is taught to believe that “the voice of a child can stop a nuclear attack.” This belief and the choir’s overly sincere songs (“I give my drink to a Soviet child, I let her sip from my straw, and then we talk of our differences and we discover they are small”) ground Meek in a world that is otherwise teetering on collapse. Her family is fractured by her conservative uncle Clay (Andy Lucien), a Reagan-administration defense worker, throwing them under the bus for his own advancement. Her community is segregated — but don’t worry, the Soviets probably won’t bomb the Black neighborhoods first because they’re unimportant. Her dad Smooch (Will Cobbs, commanding in his hilarity) struggles to make ends meet and hopes hosting more Adult Skate Nights at his Roll-a-Rama rink will reinvigorate the business.
In fiction as in life, children who feel they have no control over their world may exert extreme control over something small, something manageable. Meek does the opposite: Through a semi-supernatural Speak + Spell toy, she tries to end the Cold War and bring about world peace, reasoning that such a maneuver will bring her family security and prosperity, and make life better for her deceptively optimistic Soviet pen pal (Nina Ross).
This flip is part of Reddick’s mastery of her own story. Just like the concept of an espionage-laden Speak + Spell that instructs American children to spell “revolyvtsiya,” Meek’s acceptance of her role in the fate of the world is improbable and ridiculous. That’s why Cold War Choir Practice works: It never takes itself too seriously, even in its most earnest moments.
Cold War Choir Practice often forays into song, with music and lyrics by Reddick. The children’s choir rehearses for their holiday show, but it also serves as a Greek chorus, narrating both action and internal thought. Grace McLean is a particular standout, alternating pop star bravado and melodrama. Music director Ellen Winter, who also serves as the onstage Choir Leader, should be commended as much as director Knud Adams for balancing the show's tone.
The play indulges a bit in style near the end, when Meek delivers a monologue about a (non-nuclear) disaster befalling her community, suddenly diving into poetry like a seasoned veteran of metaphor, not like a 10-year-old. The diversion is interrupted by members of the choir throwing Atomic Fireballs — not weapons, but the candy, raining down on the stage like confetti.
Reddick and Adams best convey their more serious messages of identity and belonging through these antics, which situate the heightened, “strange and porous” world of the play at the audience’s eye level. They do not question if the audience is smart enough to understand the nuances of Reddick’s world, Meek’s tone, or the choir’s chameleonic role; instead, they trust the audience to strap in for the ride. This spirit of trust and integrity to the world of the play makes Cold War Choir Practice soar.
Cold War Choir Practice summary
Ten-year-old Meek is getting ready for Christmas with her family in Syracuse, New York in 1987. She lives above her family’s Roll-a-Rama skating rink with her father, Smooch, and her grandmother, Puddin (Lizan Mitchell), and sings in a local chapter of Seedlings of Peace, a children’s choir dedicated to sowing peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
When her distant uncle Clay brings his comically fragile wife Virgie (Crystal Finn, whose physical comedy is top-notch) home for Christmas unexpectedly, and the voice of her Soviet pen pal (Ross) emerges from her new Speak + Spell toy, Meek is thrust into a world of espionage and betrayal on both personal and political planes.
What to expect at Cold War Choir Practice
Cold War Choir Practice runs approximately 95 minutes without an intermission. The production features prop weapons, loud noises, strobe lights, haze, and fog. Cold War Choir Practice extensively discusses nuclear war and its physical, structural, and societal consequences.
Audience members in the front row at Cold War Choir Practice may interact with the performers on stage at certain moments. Cast members also walk through the aisle between the front row and the stage.
What audiences are saying about Cold War Choir Practice
Theatregoers have taken to platforms like the theatre app Mezzanine to rave about Cold War Choir Practice.
- Mezzanine user Jeffrey Rubel calls Cold War Choir Practice “amazing, weird, curious, moving, beautiful, pretty magical[…] So peculiar and so specific.”
- Mezzanine user Francesco Ferran says the play “significantly improved in the second half as the plot got underway.”
- Mezzanine user Dylan Cushing writes in a five-star review that Cold War Choir Practice is “exactly my kind of weird.”
Who should see Cold War Choir Practice
- If you want more Soviet stories alongside Lauren Yee’s Mother Russia at Signature Theatre and Chess on Broadway, Cold War Choir Practice is a delightful dip back into Russian waters.
- If you’ve enjoyed Grace McLean’s diva turns in, well, anything she’s been in (including Suffs both off and on Broadway), you’ll love her serenading escapades as a member of the play’s choir.
- If you saw other recent Knud Adams-directed plays like English and Primary Trust — both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama — you won’t want to be left out of Cold War Choir Practice.
Learn more about Cold War Choir Practice off Broadway
Cold War Choir Practice uses music, heightened language and humor, and fantastical plot elements to create an absurd world. Lace up your roller skates and trust the premise and the process.
Photo credit: Cold War Choir Practice off Broadway. (Photos by Maria Baranova)
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