American Son (Broadway)

"A play that will stay with you...Demos-Brown has written a play that takes a pick-axe to our identity as a country...Washington and Pasquale take on the challenge of performing mutual open heart surgery on one another...Leon’s use of silence and simplicity fuels the raw situation better than any stormy display could.” Full Review

"Leon directs the excellent ensemble, wherein each character gets caught up in the maelstrom of racial conflict, stereotyping, and prejudice...'American Son' transcends color, expressing the anguish all mothers endure for their sons in danger. It’s primal, it’s devastating, and when we witness it on stage, it cuts right to the core...Nor will we forget Kerry Washington and her heartbreaking performance." Full Review

"TV actress Kerry Washington is superb in a role that plunges her into every imaginable checkpoint on the emotional scale, but it’s the ideas that come at you with a fast and furious frenzy that will escort you out of the theater dazed...Acted with dexterity by a great cast, directed with economy by Kenny Leon, and written with knowledge and sobering humanity by Christopher Demos-Brown...A profound and unforgettable evening at the theater that challenges the mind." Full Review

"A potent social message...There are several strong messages driven home...There is no routine traffic stop for men of color and the world is not the same for whites and blacks. There are many subtle & overt racist comments spewed from all parties that strike like a lightning rod...When the facts are read to Kendra & Scott by Lt. Stokes the pain is piercing yet it leaves lingering doubts as to the culpability of the officer involved. The play is stirring drama with a superb cast." Full Review

"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." Full Review

"Taking the racing pulse of these jittery times with such head-on forthrightness is what gives the play its powerful, ultimately shattering charge...The play is not always subtle, but in that sense it also mirrors the reality of living in a dramatically polarized America...The actors keep even the more forced or digressive passages from falling into obvious grooves...'American Son' derives its depth of feeling primarily from Washington...The sheer force of her performance has a powerful effect." Full Review

"A microcosm of the ravages of race relations in this country. Everyone's good, but there are no heroes in this compellingly provocative story...Demos-Brown does an excellent job of drawing us into the conundrum of race in America...All four characters come at the issues from very different perspectives; and under Leon's expert direction, we see how difficult it is to find common ground...Enhancing the production is an outstanding company of A-listers.” Full Review

"The exceptional performances of the four people involved raise the bar here...The proceedings may not feel all that new, but the story certainly reflects today’s grim news, and the evening of sterling performances grounds the show to sustain one’s interest. It might make some people uncomfortable, but if you are a theater lover, you should put this down as a must-see show." Full Review

“The action takes place in real time. The tension steadily builds until the sudden shattering climax. It’s a play that grabs your attention and never lets go. What it lacks in artistry and subtlety, it makes up for in audience involvement. The choice of a story about a mixed-race son may add dimension to the plot, but the distinction between mixed-race and black is not significant to the police. The acting is uniformly strong...The direction by Kenny Leon is brisk." Full Review

"The timing could not be more apt for a Broadway theatre to offer a play that puts race at its centre...Demos-Brown spins various themes and sympathies, all underpinned with the churning dread surrounding the fate of the missing teenager. Director Kenny Leon’s exceptionally tense production maintains the constantly shifting dynamics between its four characters with ease and the production is driven by the impassioned distress and intensity of Washington’s performance." Full Review

"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." Full Review

"What Demos-Brown wrought on the page is a fusion of the intense racial issues with the universal terror of parents struggling to prepare a teenager to graduate into an antagonistic and unforgiving world. With those two elements intertwined and acidly eating into other, 'American Son' produces a far more complicated tale than simply an emotion-suffused polemic about overt and subtle manifestations of racism in the 21st Century." Full Review

"Deep inside this tightly crafted 100 minute play, we can barely find a moment to look away from this fast-moving automobile...It falters in scope and speed at moments, here and there, struggling awkwardly to shift gears and directions with each new driver, but as directed with skill and precision by Kenny Leon, the vehicle never stalls or drops below the speed limit...That last 15 minutes of that slightly too drawn out evening of a short one-act play is worth the wait." Full Review

"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." Full Review

"It deserves much credit for addressing difficult but important societal concerns with thoughtfulness and empathy — and for being able to rouse such intense reactions...At its best, 'American Son' is smart, mysterious, and engrossing — not to mention an effective star vehicle for Washington, who gives a revealing, sympathetic performance...That being said, it can also feel thin in premise, didactic in tone, and one-dimensional in characterization." Full Review

"The play's social relevance might well have been enough to get it produced (especially in the past few months when we've witnessed a slew of plays about racism on our boards), but there can be no question that Washington's involvement led it to the Great White Way. Having gained superstardom through ABC's hit series "Scandal," Washington has wisely returned to Broadway after nearly a decade in a role that's 180 degrees from her TV alter ego Olivia Pope." Full Review

"Demos-Brown's provocative and timely play is a contemporary drama — a tense, realistic, and extraordinarily personal examination of our nation's racial division...The play, directed by Kenny Leon, makes no attempt to hide its agenda...Demos-Brown, a Florida trial attorney, writes what he knows but breaks no new ground and offers no solutions. This probably wouldn't have made it to Broadway without the imprimatur of Washington." Full Review

“Farmer: 'An effective, thought-provoking piece of theater...The play has a lot on its plate, too much perhaps, but feels very timely...It makes for a potent 90 minutes...The playwright seems more interested in starting a conversation than writing a play with a firm sense of what he wants to say'...Smith: 'This is some of Leon’s best work; I just wish he was working with better material'...Farmer: 'Far from perfect, but it feels like the right play at the right time.'” Full Review

"There is no denying the play’s emotional force. There are moments when you can feel hundreds of people all holding their collective breath. But though 'American Son' has the superficial form of a classical tragedy and a scene of raw suffering that few tragedies can equal, it also has a creaky dramatic structure, shallow characterizations, naïve politics and indifferent writing...A very powerful play without being an especially good one and that shouldn’t matter but sometimes it does." Full Review

"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." Full Review

"'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." Full Review

"A tense, didactic Broadway play for our age of racially charged mistrust...You have to get past all that schematic writing to get to the deeper point, which is that racism poisons everything...The piece wrestles with crucial issues, and it’s performed with enough intensity by Pasquale and Washington under Leon’s theme-based direction that they effectively collide with your own prejudices, whoever you might be. You feel everything the characters feel, and...that has worth." Full Review

"'American Son' is not about the narrative, which has a few too many theatrical 'gotcha' moments for my taste. Instead, it is interested in airing an argument about the pervasiveness of racism...I thought a lot about Washington's performance....There's little humor and almost no nuance, just 90 minutes of close-to-tearful raging. It can feel one-noted...And yet, her character is not irrational...'American Son' may have a shaky narrative, but it is a searing political argument." Full Review

"With its ripped-from-the-headlines plot, deliberate arguments, and crystal-clear-from-the-start ending, 'American Son' would have made an excellent episode of 'Law & Order.' It’s eminently watchable...Leon directs with the smooth efficiency befitting this procedural-style work, and the cast—Washington and Pasquale are especially fine as parents whose emotions ricochet from angry to anguished to afraid and back again—wrings just about all the drama they can out of the newsprint-thin script." Full Review

"Director Kenny Leon keeps the action taut during the 90-minute running time, perhaps too taut. There isn’t much breathing room in the production...This is the rare show that would benefit from a longer running time, from more scenes exploring the characters in greater depth...Despite the best efforts of his talented cast, too often the characters can seem like mouthpieces for different points of view in a plot jerry-rigged in ways that don’t always ring true." Full Review