The Humans NYC Reviews and Tickets

“One of the triumphs of Stephen Karam’s stunning new work is how every one of the 90 or so minutes we spend with the Blakes seem blazingly authentic. Indeed, what happens is both predictable and completely surprising…at times, Karam’s almost supernatural machinations seem better suited to a B-grade horror movie, and ultimately distract from his must-be-heard message.”
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"They feel as much like a real family with scars and tender spots and grudges and rages as any family I’ve ever met. I’d like to say it is the actors who bring the magic or that it’s all on the page or that the director’s deft sense of pacing does the job. But, hell, there’s lots of credit to go around. If you can get a ticket grab it. This is one of those terrific shows you will spend worthy hours with afterwards. You know, the kind of play that keeps on giving."
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"Stephen Karam has written a play that stands for its time...The careful, relatable mundanity of the plot serves as a springboard for the profound conflicts of everyday existence...The formidable cast so brilliantly embody their roles that it's difficult to believe that they walk off stage and into their real lives...This play will move you, and it can -- and likely will be -- pondered and parsed for many years to come."
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"A deeply engaging play...'The Humans' is a psychological thriller that manages to capture the human condition, its pain, its worries, its culpability, even its hopes in concrete images that often leave the audience spellbound. Joe Mantello’s direction is pure perfection as is David Zinn’s upstairs-downstairs, superego-ego set...The ensemble cast is brilliant – one member better than the next – and with superb craft give each of their characters a gritty authenticity."
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"A production that has become even more timely in its expression of middle class anxieties, but remains most noteworthy for the exquisite performances by some of New York’s finest stage actors...For all the problems the characters face, the actors are superb in communicating an affection and good humor that feels genuine and that draws us in. They do justice to the work of playwright Stephen Karam."
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"A funny, mournful, richly detailed and deeply humane study of a beleaguered family celebrating Thanksgiving dinner in a tumbledown Chinatown apartment...'The Humans,' attempts to infuse some of the action with the sense of the surreal and uncanny. These tonal gestures aren’t always effective, particularly as the play suggests that ordinary life offers sufficient horrors without any recourse to the supernatural. But it has, Karam insists, its comforts too."
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"I really wanted to like Stephen Karam’s new play 'The Humans'...Sadly, the play left me with the same feelings as the first time and lost me at the same places...Director Joe Mantello gets the most out of his cast and his staging is interesting...My problem with this play is we’ve seen it before in 'Death of a Salesman,' only now we all are the salesman...We learn nothing here, we move forward not a step...I need to feel for these characters and I do not."
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"Under Joe Mantello’s expert direction, the play walks a delicate line between a natural sort of comedy and a surreal, foreboding drama. For every pleasantry or moment of easy kinship there’s a masked slight or a proof of distance...The premise of a clan reuniting for Thanksgiving may be far from original, but Karam’s characters are so specific and simultaneously recognizable that you may not only get wrapped up with them, but wind up reflecting on yourself and your own life in the process."
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