American Son (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (387)
See it if Want to be exposed to what it means to be a parent of a Black child in America
Don't see it if You condone the way that Black males are treated by the police in America
See it if You are moved by all the things that are happening the US today from guns to climate change to especially the plight of racism and bullying.
Don't see it if You have no desire to cry, be moved by the story and the incredulous performances by Kerry Washington, Jeremy Jordan and Steven Pasquale. Read more
See it if You want to be confronted with some of the most difficult topics of our society
Don't see it if You’re not open to seeing imperfections in society
See it if You want to a simple show that has such great twists and turns and keeps you on the edge of your seat
Don't see it if YOu don't like talky dramas
See it if you want to be intellectually stimulated and emotionally connected to a story and characters for 90 minutes, where the script is perfection.
Don't see it if you don't like plays, and want big elaborate splashy and shallow storytelling. Read more
See it if Must see drama if there ever was one. Beautifully done. Sadly, speaks of our current society. It’s scheduled to close it’s limited run 1/27
Don't see it if Unless you can’t handle dramas, you have to see it.
See it if This is a timely show with important social themes. Kerry Washington gives a master class in acting that will bring you on an emotional ride
Don't see it if If you don’t like emotional shows with no intermission.
See it if If you are moved by current racial issues. An emotional and gripping experience.
Don't see it if You are not interested in racial justice.
Critic Reviews (50)
"This is the director Kenny Leon’s best work to date: incisive and breakneck...These are big but nuanced performances...'American Son' is not a subtle play; it barely feels like a play at all. With its unrelentingly high tension on every level — maternal, marital, societal — it’s more like a slice of a nightmare, with few contours despite its surprises."
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"The rhetoric is heavy-handed, the grief and fear are unremitting, the brushstrokes are asphalt-thick, and there’s no subtlety...The play doesn’t need to establish suspense because we all know what’s happened...'American Son' is meant to make us sit with this grim certainty, and it strategically deploys the glamour of Kerry Washington to sugar the pill...She takes the rage, sorrow and guilt of our whole city-state and channels them into a single cry."
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"A dreadful play...Stale, expedient storytelling and go-for-the-jugular sentimentality...A contrived, TV-ish script peopled by one-note characters and peppered with amateurish flourishes...Its director, Kenny Leon, can’t push the material past its inherent paperback flatness...There’s nothing remotely theatrical about this play, no reason for it to be a play at all — save that we retain a kind of anxious cultural cachet about drama...This is cheap, manipulative writing."
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"“It’s hard—and, given the volume of choices, maybe ultimately impossible—to isolate the worst aspect of ‘American Son’…There’s the stilted, bulky dialogue, through which the characters deliver loads of exposition...Nobody says anything interesting, or funny, or surprising. The acting is even less flavorful, probably as a result of the deficient script...But what struck me as frankly offensive about 'American Son' was its treatment of the son, Jamal, who never appears onstage.”
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"'American Son' vibrates with the urgency of a necessary conversation...Director Kenny Leon is only ever as good as his material, and in this case he's working with a drama more compelling in subject than execution. Christopher Demos-Brown's play undercuts its power with schematic writing a tad too heavy on speeches. Nonetheless, it remains involving and provocative...This is tense theater designed to shake up our complacency and make us think. In that aim, it succeeds."
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"A thoughtful, tension-filled 90 minutes. It is a play about race, yes, and about the assumptions we make about people. It is also a play about misunderstandings, inadvertent and willful, inconsequential and potentially fatal...Kenny Leon paces this taut production more like a thriller than a polemic...'American Son' is most affecting when it is personal, not political...There is, contained within 'American Son’s' lean script, much to discuss after the curtain falls."
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"Director Kenny Leon has assembled a solid creative workforce...It’s hard to take your eyes off Washington’s Kendra, whose anguish seems to have taken over her entire body...Playwright Demos-Brown is a clever phrase-maker, and he delights in using language that vividly illustrates the social and educational gulf between Larkin and Kendra...A play that’s probably a bit too small for Broadway and a bit too narrow to throw a long shadow, but still manages to get under your skin."
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"A couple of stagy but nonetheless head-turning 'surprises' notwithstanding, what happens thereafter is understandably predictable, since the purpose of the play is to dramatize and illuminate a story that has become all too familiar. What we have here, in short, is an earnestly meant, soundly made commercial stage drama of the kind that used to play Broadway regularly, one that is overly inclined to TV-type clichés but proves to be unexpectedly good about not stacking the deck."
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