Varlotte

See it if You want to know how we got here as a country, without feeling moralized to. You want to see Will Arbery's most grounded writing to date.

Don't see it if You don't want to look behind the curtain at American conservative religion, politics, or ideology, and the hell they've wrought on us all.

Also After 2016, a lot of us wondered what (if anything) American conservatives were thinking. This show shows us that, and it's even worse than we could have imagined.

This show deserves all its awards, and then some. It never excuses its truly monstrous characters, but it never makes us the audience feel punished for watching the play, either. The ending monologue is wrenching and horrific, even after a show that's already a chilled ice-pick to the heart. The few brutal laugh lines were perfectly placed, and it never felt like we were just making "dumb hick" jokes, even though the script probably could have gotten away with it.

I love horror, and this look at American conservatives (what they think they're doing, and why they're doing it to us, what they say when we're not around, what they're really afraid of) was the scariest theater I've ever seen, even livestreamed.... Read more Read less

See it if You like ridiculously clever referential theater staged for the gods that knows its roots and isn't impressed. You might be Very Online.

Don't see it if You don't like references, politics, or being made fun of, you don't like "internet humor," you don't understand social media

See it if *You want to see two performers work magic from an empty room. *You love barebones storytelling and great music!

Don't see it if *You need a big cast, or fancy sets and costumes to enjoy a musical. *You're turned off by rural Scottish accents. *You need an edgy "twist"

Also This play might be twee or archetypal for some folks, but it really did it for me. After two years in isolation, this magical realist musical about a tiny rural community's encounters with the (super)natural broke my heart and put me back together again. It's just two performers and looping audio equipment voicing an ensemble cast of dozens, with original music, and I was awed throughout with how inventive the performers and crew were. It never beat me over the head about themes, but they were there, and the narrative (while dinged by other reviewers as simplistic) felt like a myth, or a half-remembered dream, a little secondary to the music, but definitely there and indelible. Just because you can map out a hero's journey doesn't make it (in this case) any less affecting. The emotions were there, authentic, and super intimate.

Soaring, innovative, and definitely not for everyone, but for me, this felt like a welcome reminder about why we make theater in the first place... Read more Read less

See it if * You want to see Danai Gurira try her damndest (and succeed in places!) * You want to celebrate a venerable NYC tradition!

Don't see it if * You were hoping for innovative cuts or intentionally inclusive casting. * You want themes, or a play that justifies its existence at all

Also I don't understand how this play was cut or directed. The dramaturgy felt incomprehensible, and the main direction seemed to be "stand in one place and declaim." Not active, not engaging. None of the actors felt like they'd been given anything to really think about and play to, objectives-wise, which made this production feel really all about Epic Yelling.

When you have that much money for a (very cool) expensive-looking set, why spend what looked like $5 on costumes, props, and fight choreo combined?

The big thing here is the inclusive casting- I love the idea of inclusive casting, but the way it was deployed in this production felt really thoughtless and tokenizing to the talented and woefully underused actors they cast.

Super thoughtless, and a waste of a lot of really cool talent and ideas. Danai Gurira and Ali Stroker are working overtime here and almost save it.... Read more Read less

See it if You want to see a "Dracula" that won't scare you at all, you love misplaced camp, hamminess, and lipservice to feminism that goes nowhere.

Don't see it if You want a production that actually interrogates its subject material in any sort of intelligent way.

Also Tldr; pardon the pun, but it sucks.

This play is sexist. Making women talk about feeling trapped, while great for representation, doesn't cancel out the script condoning killing "the bad kind" of survivors of trauma and literally saying "not all men" verbatim several times. This play would love to think it's feminist. It's not.

This play is racist. The one powerful character of color is basically a female "Shaft" who talks like someone from a 70s exploitation film and only exists in service of the white characters. The other characters of color are oversexed tropes, or servants. This is clearly something the playwright, in her infinite whiteness, didn't think about, or didn't care to.

This play is incoherent. Is it about economic anxiety? Religion? #MeToo? The playwright gestures emptily at all of them, but can't pick answers for any. Never fear, though, she tries ALL of them, exhaustingly.

There is no tonal consistency. It's a bloodless horror-lite, and its "camp" falls flat.... Read more Read less

See it if You want to see a luminous performance by Ruth Negga almost obscured by cluttered and cliched staging/supporting cast.

Don't see it if You want visual coherence, you don't like unnecessary sexual violence imagery that doesn't have a CW for some reason, trump imagery.

Also Farber takes a few big textual swings with staging the soliloquies as monologues, and most of them are misses.

Unfortunately, those are the only real risks she takes in this production, which is otherwise a traditional staging meant to showcase Ruth Negga's charismatic Hamlet.

What's done to Ophelia in this production is thoughtless at best, and gratuitous for its own sake at worst. The portrayal of her uses inexplicable nudity and implied sexual violence that feel at odds with the text, and make her harrowing textual descent into madness feel like an afterthought.

The gravediggers/players/death figures are fantastic, but are deployed heavy-handedly, and feel like escapees from a yet-unwritten McDonagh play.

Quibbles: Why, in a world where every guard has an AK-47 like a UN Peacekeeper, does Hamlet wave a tiny toy knife? Why the Trump-Claudius?

Another entry in the big-money, high-concept Shakespeare Machine, but with a luminous lead performance that almost saves it.... Read more Read less

See it if You love anachronistic, feminist witchy theater happenings that know where they've come from and are burning brightly towards somewhere.

Don't see it if You need clear traditional narratives and/or approaches to history/theater. You need answers spelled out. You think history is great men.

See it if You want to interrogate American racial humor, and the relationship between playwright, actor, and audience.

Don't see it if You don't like confronting your own discomfort, you like more passive theater experiences.

See it if You love Grace McLean's innovative music.

Don't see it if you want specificity in lyrics/book/storytelling, you don't want to be triggered by an assault narrative that doesn't serve the story at all

Also McLean did a lot of research into medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen for this show. Unfortunately, we don't see any of it. The fascinating medieval setting is so vaguely sketched as to feel like literal set dressing, and the women's internal lives and traumatic backstories are reduced to vague, half-baked pseudo-therapy cliches about "light" and "darkness," and the beauty in "being broken."

There's a sexual assault that's really traumatically relayed that serves no narrative purpose other than to jolt the audience awake, which feels in especially bad faith when coming from a feminist artist like McLean.

This show has amazing music, and gorgeous staging. Unfortunately, that's about all it has to recommend it. It could use another pass by a discerning dramaturg.... Read more Read less

See it if you love seeing classical myths through the prisms of America's most powerful exports: capitalism, spectacle, and the blues.

Don't see it if you need "traditional" showtunes, story, staging, and performances in musicals.

See it if you're a Liberal Boomer Tourist who wants to pat themselves on the back for listening to something slightly challenging in a safe setting.

Don't see it if You want radical theater to be actually radical. You think that feminism should be intersectional. You think class/money influences the law.

See it if you want to be immersed in an abstract, multigenerational portrait of resilient femininity in the face of horror, colonialism, and war

Don't see it if you think this sounds like a play about "women's issues."

See it if you want to see all the lost raunch, humor, vitality, and menace restored to a play that's often rendered toothless, and neutered.

Don't see it if You don't like theater that makes you think or leaves the lights on. You like things explained to you directly. You put shows on pedestals.

See it if you're interested in Jacobean drama; you like a healthy mix of tones; you want to explore revenge, misogyny, and power.

Don't see it if you think violence, melodrama, and dark comedy shouldn't mix. You don't like ambiguity. You don't like classics in contemporary staging.

See it if You get Shakespearean in-jokes, you want to see Janet McTeer teach a Master Class in performance.

Don't see it if You want to see a proto-feminist legend get narrative justice without a man snatching the spotlight

See it if You like psychosexual teen-girl friendships brought to excruciatingly-stylized life. You love incendiary dialogue, dark humor, and ambiguity

Don't see it if Female pain makes you laugh. If you're squeamish, idealize/fetishize teen girls, are sexist, or need clear resolutions and explanations.

See it if You like sci fi that expects an intelligent audience and doesn't explain, warm and compassionate grooves, and interstellar protest music.

Don't see it if You need plot explanations, you don't like sci fi, you like tidy resolutions, you're conservative or don't like thinking in the theater.

Also This show was incredible. Immersive without making your audience running laps, creating an entire world out of a five-piece folk ensemble, and never over-explaining. It was poignant, striking, and funny, while not sugar-coating how the future ended up getting so bad in the first place. Optimistic, but holding humanity accountable. Gorgeous music, too.... Read more Read less

See it if you're a babyboomer who needs recognition, you think that there are "bad people on both sides" so activism is pointless, you <3 flat writing

Don't see it if you want originality, you want a play about politics with a clear stance or a play about relationships with any well-written characters

See it if you thought there needed to be a feminist, intersectional "Hamilton," you love gorgeous writing, staging, and acting, you don't suck

Don't see it if you need narrative "bio pic" style plays, you need plays to be "about" something, you're easily confused, you're a terrible person

See it if you love innovative takes on the classic that interrogate them for a contemporary audience, you want feminist horror and catharsis

Don't see it if you need things spoon-fed to you, you hate seeing women regaining agency and power, you only like traditional versions of older stories

See it if you're interested in why people turn to fundamentalist religions, you like interesting staging and writing

Don't see it if you're protective of your religion, you need a concrete ending

See it if you love Sondheim, imaginative, minimalist, and immersive staging that feels absolutely natural, you want to see phenomenal performers.

Don't see it if you don't like Sweeney Todd. You hate immersive theater, or musicals. You love big-budget broadway nonsense.

See it if you like nontraditional theater experiences (part memoir, part concert, part TED Talk, part stand-up.)

Don't see it if you don't have the patience for thought experiments, sick rhymes, nerd humor, or abstract concepts.

See it if you want to see a sterilized book report on the 70s with hot dancing guys, you love narrative and tonal dissonance, you <3 trauma tourism

Don't see it if you want three-dimensional characters, a coherent plot, or a play where female characters' trauma isn't used to manipulate the audience

See it if you love really cringey rape jokes, seeing interesting women reduced to really shoddy cliches, inconsistent writing, and banality.

Don't see it if you wanted an interesting play about a fascinating woman, you wanted a nuanced take on medieval history or feminism Just don't see it.

See it if you like quirky quips and setups, Floridian Lake-Woebegone esque humor, and great dancing

Don't see it if you hate dancing, you want things that get set up to have narrative payoff, you like concise writing

See it if You like nonlinear plotting, finding the beauty in seeming banality, anti-"EPIC" storytelling clichés, celebrating small moments.

Don't see it if You need stories to be linear or have a clearly-defined "point," you need big teary resolution to things, women's lives don't interest you

See it if you love new translation of old works, really committed ensemble work, quirky staging

Don't see it if older styles of dramatic plotting and characters irritate you

See it if You love dance, movement, and innovative visual storytelling

Don't see it if You need a linear plot spoon-fed to you

See it if you love stories about multiple generations of immigrant women that all take place in one building

Don't see it if you're a stickler for consistency and also character development

See it if you like feminism, strong women, strong dialogue, and innovative storytelling

Don't see it if you have bad taste or hate women

See it if you love stereotypes about marginalized groups, you're a TERF or a straight man who thinks they're qualified to write about feminism

Don't see it if you like dramatic consistency, well-thought out female characters, or "politically relevant" theater that is both of those things

See it if you're interested in the history of theater/American pop culture/Judaism, you want to see a GORGEOUS LGBTQ love story, or love amazing music

Don't see it if you hate having emotions, you have terrible taste, you are an antisemite or someone who hates language

See it if you love artisanal food, brooklyn-insider humor, and maybe-mocking millennials

Don't see it if you're a stickler for linear narrative, you don't like a voice-of-god narrator

See it if You like "Natasha, Pierre..." You like really good singing and staging, and don't care about lazy lyrics

Don't see it if You really hate it when lyricists repeat lines instead of writing dialogue, you want nuanced character development

See it if You are a feminist or a birth mother, you know a feminist or a birth mother, you like good writing, burlesque, or supporting strong women

Don't see it if You're a sexist tool, you hate one-man shows, you hate humor, you hate burlesque

See it if You like nuanced but still funny interrogations of massive, for-profit Christianity with really good singing

Don't see it if you're a devout Christian with no sense of humor

See it if You like beautiful production design, you like immersive theater, you want to explore a feeling more than a set narrative, you like disco

Don't see it if You want a traditional narrative, you don't like walking around, you hate disco, you're feeling cynical, you don't like being touched

See it if You like Rebecca (the Hitchcock Film or the DuMaurier Novel,) Ritual Sacrifices, Orgies, Incredible Dancing, Delicately Constructed Worlds

Don't see it if You need a narrative throughline, you hate nudity, silent shows weird you out