Night is a Room NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Contemporary realism predominates in Bill Rauch’s impeccably designed production...The play’s hints of the fantastical don’t quite read. There is something a little bloodless and cerebral here, too: an intellectual experiment beneath the stormy passion. So there is much to be grateful for in the excellent casting...The oddest, least satisfying thing about 'Night Is a Room' is its conclusion, which wraps things up far too neatly."
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"The writer addresses a subject that seems positively bourgeois...'Night is a Room' faintly recalls Albee and Pinter’s cryptic, psychosexual puzzles, but Wallace carves out her own territory with rich, daring (if too often bathetic) language. Desire, genetic destiny and the destructive force of love are the topics here, ones that transcend class."
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"'Night Is a Room' feels a lot like ersatz Albee— but without Albee’s stinging language or his biting cerebral assault on the moral standards of our smugly liberal society...Wallace writes with a kind of ecstatic lyricism, a love song to the sound of her own poetic voice. But while the individual images can be beautiful, the age-old conflict between mother and wife is reduced to a single blunt and literal metaphor."
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"Even with long swaths of beautiful writing mixed in amid the inescapable pulpiness, 'Night Is a Room' doesn't really accomplish as much as it wants, nor does it feel particularly substantial...The second act wraps the piece up with too neat a bow for all the messiness that has transpired...Still, it's consistently entertaining, thanks to mordantly funny dialogue and a pair of stunning performances from Dominczyk and Dowd."
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"While a deeper play that treats the subject with sensitivity could be effective, 'Night is a Room' is so heavy-handedly written and loaded with bombastically dramatic situations that at this past Saturday's matinee a great deal of the audience was laughing out loud during scenes that were surely meant to be taken seriously...The fact that director Bill Rauch's cast is so good, and so honestly committed to the material, only makes the script's clunkiness more apparent."
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"It is tautly constructed, rooted in a highly dramatic situation...And it is a first-class, 100% Grade A lulu...Wallace hasn't done a thing to make it even mildly believable. Having taken on this dubious case study, the director, Bill Rauch, does more with it than one imagines possible, aided by a cast that deserves much better...It seems rooted in theories that don't exist outside the playwright's mind, resulting in a work that feels willfully contrived."
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"The combination of all the elements help ensure that 'Night Is a Room' will be one of the year's most talked-about plays...Wallace is subverting our expectations and tolerances, daring us to question and judge people who are being forced to endure unimaginable horrors...Because 'Night Is a Room' gives us so much to chew on, the easy-to-swallow ending is imbued with a bitter aftertaste that stops just short of ruining the five-course dinner that precedes it."
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"Though all three actors deliver all-out, no-holds-barred performances, I can't say that their characters drew me in enough to engage me fully or make me sympathize strongly with any of them. And, given the laughs with which some of the dialogue was met, neither was the audience…Wallace is an intelligent writer...Though she knows how to navigate between the poetic and erotic, I don't think she's adding anything especially insightful to the issues she's tackling here."
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