Off-Broadway Reviews

'The Harder They Come' review — new musical has big beats and big potential

The Harder They Come is the new musical adaptation of the critically acclaimed 1972 film of the same name. The world premiere tuner at The Public Theater features a book by Suzan-Lori Parks and songs by Jimmy Cliff, including reggae hits such as “You Can Get It If You Really Want” and “Many Rivers to Cross,” plus new songs by Parks. Scenic designers Clint Ramos and Diggle transform the Public’s Newman Theater space into a Jamaican shanty town with colorful tin structures covered in palm fronds,...

'The Coast Starlight' review — play about missed connections chugs along at a crawl

The passenger next to you on a long train ride could be the bane of your existence — or they could be your soulmate. When that trip is 36 hours long, it’s impossible not to imagine both. Such is the conceit of Keith Bunin’s The Coast Starlight, now playing at Lincoln Center Theater. The play begins with Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá) and T.J. (Will Harrison) confessing, or rehearsing, what they would have told each other on the title train if either had gathered the courage to speak. Though they...

'How to Defend Yourself' review — play about self-defense pulls its punches

Liliana Padilla's How to Defend Yourself has its moments of strength. An early sequence sees five college girls in a nondescript workout room, throwing punches to the beat of Ginuwine's "Pony." The scene is meticulously choreographed, but it doesn't feel like a performance. They're tapping into something bigger. These girls are here, in a makeshift self-defense workshop, to learn to protect themselves from would-be assaulters — something a now-hospitalized peer couldn't do. Their rhythmic...

'Dark Disabled Stories' review — a challenge to create a more inclusive world

The set for Dark Disabled Stories, created by the design collective dots, is anything but dark. At the beginning of the play, (mostly) offstage performer Alejandra Ospina describes it in a clarion voice: “The set is a long shallow box raised 16 inches above the floor. Rectangular in shape and light pink. Very, very pink: Benjamin Moore’s Island Sunset Pink.” The platform is flanked with sequin-wrapped poles and topped with big, pillowy bubble letters that spell the show’s title. It’s a bright,...

'Misty' review — a physical, musical, and comedic feat

Misty, written and performed by Arinzé Kene, arrives at The Shed after a critically acclaimed West End run. The show fuses poetry, absurdist comedy, and live music. It follows Kene’s process of writing a play and features scenes of the work at hand: a spoken word piece about a man who starts a fight on a London night bus. The opening number describes the city of London as a “city creature” and the man embroiled in the fight as a “virus.” He’s a victim of the gentrification happening as “blood...

'The Trees' review — aimless new play doesn't ground itself

In the first few minutes of The Trees, Agnes Borinsky sows a seed of a potentially intriguing story. While in a leafy park outside their father’s home in Connecticut, siblings Sheila (Crystal Dickinson) and David (Jess Barbagallo) find themselves inexplicably rooted in place. And not figuratively. Like a couple of saplings, the two have actually been dug into the earth – an effect achieved through a simple theatrical sleight as two small circular trap doors descend. They can’t move. After the...

'The Best We Could' review — a ride on the road to ruin

It's been said that one should never reveal weighty secrets during a car ride — if the other person reacts badly, there's no escape. The characters in Emily Feldman's The Best We Could (a family tragedy) abide by this rule, but a cross-country drive nonetheless puts one family on a road to ruin. Thirty-six-year-old Ella (Aya Cash) is an L.A.-based, cynical serial quitter at various arts jobs. Her parents — friendly-to-a-fault Lou (Frank Wood) and high-strung Peg (Constance Shulman) — are...

'Letters From Max' review — a poetic meditation on friendship and grief

In 2011, playwright Sarah Ruhl accepted a young poet named Max Ritvo into her playwriting class at Yale. In 2016, Ritvo died of a relapse of Ewing's sarcoma, a pediatric cancer. In between, the two forged a deep bond built on a shared appreciation for each other's curiosity, intellect, and warmth. Ruhl immortalized their exchanges in the epistolary memoir Letters From Max, and she builds on that work with her new play of the same name, a flesh-and-blood tribute to her late friend. Letters From...

'The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window' review — Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan lead a rare revival

Lorraine Hansberry’s 1964 drama The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window hasn't had a major New York revival in 50 years. That fact alone would make this play, which premiered on Broadway five years after A Raisin in the Sun, an event. Add Oscar Isaac as Sidney and Rachel Brosnahan as his wife, Iris, and the magnetism intensifies. Despite the rarity factor and the pair of marquee stars, director Anne Kauffman’s revival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music is a modestly engaging production of a...

'Elyria' review — a family confronts the future on a journey to the past

Playwright Deepa Purohit has had an unconventional career: Before co-founding a theatre company, she taught in public schools, opened a consulting business, and got a master's in public health from Columbia. These experiences gave her the insight to pen Elyria, a tale of the Gujarati diaspora in 1982 Ohio, now playing at Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater. Elyria is a coming-of-age story that investigates what happens when class and community prevent adults from coming into their...