American Son (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Wants to be a deep, complex examination of an immediate, vital issue and comes up short...The four characters...are more like representatives of viewpoints rather than flesh and blood. They speak to each other in talking points...Leon’s overheated direction turns the stage into a debate platform...The cast does their level best to humanize the proceedings, particularly Washington who filters Demos-Brown’s stagey dialogue through desperate mother love and a laser-like focus."
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"Washington gives a totally riveting performance in Christopher Demos-Brown’s taut, intermission-less play that intensely builds toward its climax in real-time. It is sternly trying to depict a recurring problem in America, but spins the tale via dramatic portraits and confrontations rather than by sermonizing. Under Kenny Leon’s sizzling direction, this is an unrelieved, high-tension drama with a stalwart cast that never falters."
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"The most common and deadly pitfall of any drama that attempts to address social ills is the failure to root polemics in believable human drama...A blunt, and frankly unsophisticated, primer on a deeply urgent crisis that blandly panders to those without skin in the game...A more adept stage actress might have had a better chance at lending dimension to Demos-Brown’s flat central figure, but Washington’s performance strikes the only note that’s called for with a numbing monotony."
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"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."
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“’American Son’, a gripping new play...is piercingly of the moment, thunderously bleak, written in all caps, and indulgently depressing. Washington gives a devastating performance...but blunt writing provides shorthanded dialogue and characterizations that are unrealistic and convenient—tooled for the sake of advancing arguments, and provoking the audience, rather effectively serving a coherent social or political mission.”
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"This play, directed with a stilted nerviness by Kenny Leon, is strangely locked in on itself. It is 90 minutes long, and rigidly stuck in the grooves it sets up right at the beginning. These grooves are vital and timely themes, but 'American Son' nullifies their impact through clunky storytelling and flat characterization...Manipulative and crass...The way the ending is phrased and treated...feels rushed and horribly exploitative...Both a waste of important material and its talented cast."
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“A blistering, explosive play, a searing deep dive into systemic and institutionalized racism in contemporary America...All four actors give dynamic, honest performances, led by Washington...‘American Son’ wisely avoids clichés and melodrama, although there is some emotional manipulation, but it’s easy to look past that and immerse yourself in the onstage dilemma — and wonder what you would do."
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"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."
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