Barrow Street Theatre, New York
(212) 868-4444
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Nina Raine’s comic drama about a deaf young man and his offbeat family could easily have been overwhelming, said Elisabeth Vincentelli in the New York Post. It includes supertitles and extensive use of sign language, and its intelligent, complex characters communicate both their love and frustrations via “witty zingers and biting put-downs.” In the case of this award-winning import from London, though, “too much is a good thing.” Raine’s protagonist, Billy (Russell Harvard), is a deaf young man whose headstrong father (Jeff Perry) prevented Billy from ever learning sign language because he believed it would be an abandonment of the “mainstream.” The deaf, he proclaims, are “the f---ing Muslims of the handicapped world”; no son of his, he says, will vanish into “the capital-D ‘Deaf Community.’”
In this home, dinner-table conversation is “a rhapsody of jabs,” and Billy must lip-read to keep pace, said Peter Santilli in the Associated Press. Not surprisingly, he’s “perpetually relegated to the outskirts of the family dialogue.” The dynamics shift, however, after he falls in love with a young woman (Susan Pourfar) who was born to deaf parents and is gradually going deaf herself. She introduces Billy to sign language and connects him with the deaf community. When she steps inside the “well-insulated cocoon of Billy’s family,” she becomes the catalyst for an overdue rebellion.
The resulting battle “touches on a dizzying assortment of daunting topics,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. The play’s remarkable ensemble energetically argues about cultural hierarchies and the relative strengths of sign and spoken language, and one can’t help but admire how the script “keeps all these weighty thematic balls twirling in the air.” Raine’s plot loses some steam in the second act, when some “self-conscious Important Moments occur.” But by then this play has granted viewers a heightened sense for the way that each of us is only capable of hearing “in his or her own imperfect way.”
-
Critics' choice: Outstanding new Japanese restaurantsFeature An all-women sushi team, a 15-seat listening bar, and more
-
Why do Dana White and Donald Trump keep pushing for a White House UFC match?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION The president and the sports mogul each have their own reasons for wanting a White House spectacle
-
'Quiet vacationing': a secret revolt against workplace cultureThe explainer You can be in two places at once
-
If/Thenfeature Tony-winning Idina Menzel “looks and sounds sensational” in a role tailored to her talents.
-
Rocky
feature It’s a wonder that this Rocky ever reaches the top of the steps.
-
Love and Information
feature Leave it to Caryl Churchill to create a play that “so ingeniously mirrors our age of the splintered attention span.”
-
The Bridges of Madison County
feature Jason Robert Brown’s “richly melodic” score is “one of Broadway’s best in the last decade.”
-
Outside Mullingar
feature John Patrick Shanley’s “charmer of a play” isn’t for cynics.
-
The Night Alive
feature Conor McPherson “has a singular gift for making the ordinary glow with an extra dimension.”
-
No Man’s Land
feature The futility of all conversation has been, paradoxically, the subject of “some of the best dialogue ever written.”
-
The Commons of Pensacola
feature Stage and screen actress Amanda Peet's playwriting debut is a “witty and affecting” domestic drama.