'Let's Love!' Off-Broadway review — Ethan Coen tackles love and sex in three short plays
Read our review of Let's Love! off Broadway, a trio of one-act plays written by Ethan Coen and starring Aubrey Plaza and more at Atlantic Theater Company.
Summary
- Let’s Love is made up of three vignettes about sex and love by the Coen Brothers' Ethan Coen
- An overall strong ensemble includes Audrey Plaza in a take-no-prisoners performance
- Theatregoers found the play to be a nice evening out for couples
Let’s Love! is a comic, microscopic introspection on sex, relationships, and love across three disparate stories — nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps the show arrives with expectations of ambition due to its playwright: Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers, who previously penned the existential play trio Almost an Evening. If that show aimed to be the apple in Eden, the more modest Let’s Love! wants to be a box of bittersweet chocolate.
Directed by Neil Pepe, Let’s Love! gets off to a rocky start with the first mini-play, in which two strangers in a bar separately ruminate on sex and aging to the audience. What may have been intended restraint on Mary McCann’s part as the Broad results in a stale recitation that sterilizes the character's raunchy, boisterous sexual history. Luckily, the rest of the ensemble, as seen in the next two plays, carve out fleshed-out characterizations and sentiments in their delivery of Coen’s crude wit and dense, transgressive writing.
The second vignette is the most entertaining, earning roars of laughter through its entanglements, bait-and-switch twists, and characters unsure how to take control of their grievances. It’s anchored by Aubrey Plaza’s take-no-prisoners performance as the bitter Susan, who hires a mercenary (an appropriately cast Chris Bauer) to enact revenge against her ex (an easygoing CJ Wilson, who excels in a pantomime during an awkward situation), who left Susan for a new paramour (an obsessive, pouty Mary Wiseman). Plaza turns a yank of a drawer and a fumble with a wine bottle into physical expressions of her fury. “Everybody in the world has somebody!” Susan laments.
The final vignette delivers an embarrassing and gross surprise, shocking in its lengthiness and provoking audible waves of disgust among the audience. Yet, it also hits as a relatable “from bad to worse” situation, performed by an apologetic Noah Robbins (who also doubles well as the nebbish Howie in the second segment). It’s what makes a mutual agreement between the Boy and Girl (Dylan Gelula) grants the play an optimistic, yet not mawkish, coda.
Transitional songs are performed and written between each mini-play by a hypnotic Nellie McKay, who also delivers chuckle-worthy one-liners. She moves with a regal air, and yet I expected her to burst into Bugs Bunny mischief out of a Merrie Melodies “Rhapsody Rabbit” short. The play’s most potent aura of melancholy is in McKay’s performance, the blues blanketed beneath her suave humor. Let’s Love wraps up in what would be one final, high-spirited musical number featuring the whole ensemble, which would have tied the three vignettes in a neat bow. Alas, on my night, the volume of the instruments overpowered McKay’s vocals.
Let’s Love! summary
Ethan Coen’s Let’s Love! is split into three vignettes: the first deals with a Broad and a man (Dion Graham) at a bar each delivering individual monologues in “The Broad at the Bar.” The second is “Dark Eyes,” starring a spurned woman offering $10,000 and sex for a mercenary to beat up her ex, but they all face unexpected entanglements. The third “Let’s Love,” depicting an embarrassing incident at a dinner date and how the couple deals with the aftermath.
What to expect at Let’s Love!
Riccardo Hernandez’s unfussy scenic design begins with a sole piano on stage for the first of McKay’s performances. Turntables swap the sets, from bar to living room to restaurant, in between each vignette. There’s a great cutaway gag where a portion of the living room would spin to reveal another couple in relation to another scene.
Vomit-averse audience, be warned: The aforementioned gross-out in the third vignette deliberately runs long.
What audiences are saying about Let’s Love!
As of writing, the review aggregator Show-Score has a 72% audience approval rating for Let’s Love! based on 31 reviews.
- “A pleasant evening at the theatre: think episode Neil Simon, or 'The Love Boat,' with a whiff of 'La Ronde,' only dirtier." - Show-Score user aka
- “Super fun and entertaining night out of the theater.” - Show-Score user BwayBaby
- “It was light and frothy." - My +1 at the show
Read more audience reviews of Let’s Love! on Show-Score.
Who should see Let’s Love!
- Let’s Love is designed for a couple’s night out.
- Those who admire Ethan Coen’s movies, both solo and with his brother Joel Coen, or his previous plays with Atlantic Theater Company — Almost An Evening and Women Or Nothing — would be curious to see and discuss his latest play with the company, as well as his newest collaboration with Audrey Plaza, who previously acted in Coen’s recent movie Honey Don’t!
- Let’s Love! can feel like a companion piece to Stephen Sondheim’s Company, an introspection on the social expectations of love and sex: the pressue to have relationships and talk about them with others. It explores how sex can be utilized as a tool of connection, transaction, or momentary gratification.
Learn more about Let’s Love! off Broadway
Ethan Coen’s newest play Let’s Love! doesn’t claim to be any more than it is. It's like a box of bittersweet chocolate, a little imperfect and a little pleasurable.
Photo credit: Let's Love! off Broadway. (Photos by Ahron R. Foster)
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