What the Constitution Means to Me (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Nothing less than a chronicle of the legal subjugation of women by men...It is a tragedy told as a comedy, a work of inspired protest, a slyly crafted piece of persuasion and a tangible contribution to the change it seeks. It is not just the best play to open on Broadway so far this season, but also the most important...Schreck gives a real and wrenching performance, not a speech…‘Constitution’ is one of the things we always say we want theater to be: an act of civic engagement."
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"It’s the rare indie theater piece that doesn’t require intimacy...It’s theater in the old sense, the Greek sense, a place where civic society can come together and do its thinking and fixing...The text itself doesn’t seem to have changed since its Off Broadway run last year, yet the show has deepened, sweetened, and strengthened in its move to Broadway...Broadway’s oxygen has turned her into a wildfire. On the night I saw the show, the audience roared its response."
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S.H.: "Schreck’s performance has developed muscles. It’s gotten more visceral — more risky and exposed. The pain of it all—and the defiance—is more visible underneath what she calls her ‘psychotic politeness’...Schreck has us in hand both as a performer and as the constructor of the play." I.C.: "And that’s ultimately what I found so bold and moving: That she unapologetically puts herself — and to some extent the story of other people left out of the Constitution — at the center of it."
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"Few new works for the stage are as instantly, trenchantly timely...It's a play of ideas for which people are not just hungry but starved...It challenges us to step back and look at the bigger picture...The thoughtful craftsmanship that has gone into building the play is fully evident, notably in the skill with which Schreck relates her own history to the gaping holes in the Constitution where adequate protections for women should be...Unique, stimulating, and exquisitely heartfelt."
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"With Tracy-Flick pluck, she dives into an energetic civics lesson. And soon, she springboards from the Ninth and 14th Amendments to talk about the women in her family, and about herself in the most personal terms...It’s no small achievement to eke laughs out of that material, but Schreck certainly does, her humor swinging from self-deprecating to the can-you-believe-these-guys variety...It is shaggily structured, but also original, which is to be celebrated."
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"The engaging writer-performer is all smiles and so are we...But by the end of the show, we’ve been stirred — and challenged — by her penetrating insights into that document...Although she never drops her unthreatening demeanor of all-American niceness, Schreck takes a more acerbic tone as she works up to her true subject...To her credit, Schreck doesn’t let righteous anger curdle into polemics. On the contrary, she closes with an uplifting message."
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"The problem is that Ms. Schreck, for whatever reason, is rarely willing to grapple directly, at least not for very long, with the raw emotions triggered by her truth-telling...A reminiscential lecture about feminism, thinly disguised as a play. I would have preferred the lecture on its own—Ms. Schreck is a phenomenally powerful storyteller—but 'What the Constitution Means to Me' wouldn’t have been nearly as popular had it not been sweetened up far past the point of indigestibility."
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"Art can make a difference, it can improve you. But what does it take? Brutal honesty and plenty of facts. Schreck provides both in abundance—along with natural charisma and loads of humor. The piece is a model of how a playwright-performer can use the memoir-monologue and electrify it within a harrowing historical context...This ingenious play keeps peeling away its layers, to reveal a blood-chilling core truth: The Constitution isn’t here to protect you."
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