"Though it’s not by a long shot the first time a comedy has mined the nuptials-with-an-ex-to-grind setup, Bryna Turner’s 'At the Wedding'...offers a fresh and trenchant take on the genre...The lines are funny; Turner has a boxer’s sense of the two-punch rhythm of jokes. But it’s Wiseman...who makes them hilarious by making them sad at the same time...The plot, too, keeps well ahead of you, trusting you will survive in pleasurable uncertainty until its loose threads are eventually gathered...That authorial patience is part of what makes 'At the Wedding' so fresh."
Read more
"3/5 stars...70 minutes of enjoyable, though trite, wisecracking and wisdom-sharing about the unbreakable bond between love and pain...Unfortunately, save perhaps for Leigh, all the other characters' development gets sacrificed to accommodate Carlo's huge presence and narrow view of true love...One redeeming way to interpret these bits of 'At the Wedding' is that it actually takes place through Carlo's point of view, and there is evidence for that...One other thing 'At the Wedding' does get right is the lack of a clean conclusion."
Read more
"Manages to be both waggishly witty and tenderly affecting as it peels back to reveal the underlying loneliness of its acerbic protagonist...But what makes 'At the Wedding' so effective is that, on the whole, it is not a pity party...The entire setup, with its arrangement of self-contained dialogues, works perfectly here because it fits so well with the wedding reception theme...Director Jenna Worsham does a lovely job of arranging the performers and the action so that it all has the proper feel for the play."
Read more
"4/5 stars...Wiseman herself is a comic find. Left to her own devices by Turner and Worsham at that moment when the 'Til Death' neon flickers, she corners her audience—like a boorishly outrée guest at a wedding party—but artfully wins them over to her corner in what promises to be a nuptial battle...The play, at this early stage, is perhaps not quite fully realized; even so, laughter constantly flows, quite often outrageously so, through 70 lively minutes. Making play, playwright, and performers worth a visit to Lincoln Center."
Read more