American Son (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (388)
See it if The strong script steals the show in this intense drama about race in America.
Don't see it if You don’t like heavy dramas.
See it if Covers a lot of ground w/upscale parents trying to raise a black child in racist USA. Conflict of aspirations, fears & values. Good acting
Don't see it if You are expecting a thriller. This was a parental & marital argument. There is a dual mystery of the son’s emerging identity & whereabouts.
See it if It's highly topical, well intentioned & certainly heartfelt but it's wildly overwritten & overwrought despite solid performances from cast
Don't see it if Demos-Brown button-pushes his drama to exhaustion leaving little room for complexity or nuance Anger may be justified but its on steroids
See it if You feel that a play about young black men and their interactions with police is incredibly relevant and important for Broadway to address.
Don't see it if You can already write this play in your head. It’s exactly what you think it is, plus with Kerry Washington screaming for 90 minutes.
See it if you prefer dramas that challenge you and hold up a mirror to society. This is an important, powerful play of our #BlackLivesMatter era.
Don't see it if you’re looking for a light, fun night of theatre. This ain’t Wicked. Read more
See it if At the mercy of authority, fraught parents hope to quicken the answers to the questions regarding their son. Universality revealed in title.
Don't see it if Another drama w/ race and identity under the microscope.Washington's jangly performance is the only distinguishing grace of this mild drama.
See it if you want to see a very topical play that is very well-observed and well-done and well-acted.
Don't see it if you're looking for a fun night out. It's pretty tough stuff.
See it if you don't mind being riveted in a very manipulative way. Good acting, particularly like Eugene Lee in a relatively small/important role.
Don't see it if Sub par writing and direction. Pasquale's character underwritten. Anxiety high from start to finish with a predictably sad ending.
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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