Crackskull Row NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (58)
See it if Dark family mystery with intense characters, ghosts, and gorgeous language. I was transfixed, torched and blown away. What an ending!
Don't see it if The accents will put you off, or you don't enjoy this much intensity, including sex and violence.
See it if you like Irish plays and funny but gloomy family sagas, great accents, edgy but gradually revealed storyline & secrets
Don't see it if you have trouble with nonlinear structure and characters playing multiple versions of themselves or not, thick Irish accents, sad characters
See it if Molloy's engrossing pitch-black dramedy of family history at its most perverse Language can border on poetic Actors all fine esp Costigan
Don't see it if Irish accents can detract as well as dark subject Simring's breakneck pacing often disorients Reminiscent of early McDonagh or Philip Ridley
See it if I don't really recommend it. Great acting but unpleasant to watch. Nice set though. The tiniest stage I've ever seen. Very intimate theater
Don't see it if If you don't like seeing plays about incest. Seemed long. Ugh!!
See it if you enjoy Irish drama. The playwright, Honor Molloy, is a third-rate Martin McDonagh.
Don't see it if you get upset about incestuous themes. Also, characters go from young to old and back, and can be very confusing.
See it if You like Irish plays. Incest, violence, sadness, fantasy, realism, a little of everything. Super set, wonderful acting, terrific writing.
Don't see it if If Irish accents turn you off. If you want a light funny sweet play, this is not it. Read more
See it if you like Irish plays with humor and drama and mysticism. great acting and anguish.
Don't see it if you don't like Irish accents, dysfunctional families, cast playing multiple roles, non-linear plot.
See it if you love the sound of the irish brogue and super dysfunctional family life, filled with rage, jealousy, and violence. deep, dirty, dark.
Don't see it if you like light and frothy. this is dark and dirty. small but functional staging
Critic Reviews (20)
"A minor problem with the play's structure is that it's difficult to keep track of the characters' secrets and lies as they slip into and out of their own regrettable past and present selves. Yet director Kira Simring has a firm grip on the action and keeps the cast invested in their unlikable characters. Receptive audiences will find the weird language that Molloy has created fascinating and find themselves unwittingly drawn into the nightmarish scene."
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“Director Kira Simring and her talented cast manage the nifty trick of creating a path of destruction that is both in and out of time…The double casting adds to the mind warp…Ms. Molloy writes with a poetic sensibility, a fondness for puns and an ear for metaphor…Ghosts, when they arrive, tend to show up barefoot (and sometimes, wondrously, from out of the fireplace).”
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"Under Simring’s lyrical direction, there is a very Oedipal twang and structure...Molloy plays with flashbacks and memories that start with a stellar performance by Colin Lane as a jailed man looking through the prison bars back into his past...This is a bleak and dark exploration of jealousy, rage, and maternal manipulation...If only there had been less guilt and ghosts on 'Crackskull Row'...all would have turned out quite differently, but that’s not how the Irish roll."
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"Molloy spins a tale of intrigue and madness as she exposes the underbelly of a complex dysfunctional family...That past is played out brilliantly by the engaging cast who give their multiple characters and their multifarious conflicts authenticity and believability...Under Kira Simring’s direction, 'Crackskull Row' is as good as it gets and it does not get better than this...'Crackskull Row' is not to be missed. Just leave propriety and apprehension behind."
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"Molloy adds just enough of a narrative bridge, with snippets of poetic narrative, for us to understand how Masher’s deranged emotions effect the personages we see in various scenes...This is above all a dynamic and fascinating tale of a family at its most primitive and self-retributive...The director and design crew’s excellent work conveys the play’s symbolism and themes."
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"Grotesque but richly satisfying...Ms. Molloy enters the ring, exploring rage, dissolution, sexual perversity and family history with a bleak and penetrating acuity...The performers, directed by Kira Simring, are uniformly on point, with a grizzled Mr. Lane and a disheveled Ms. Donnelly especially fine...But it is Ms. Molloy’s salty, slangy yet singsong dialogue that most resonates."
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"The text is beautifully constructed, but it asks for magic, and Kira Simring's un-beautiful production hasn't got much of a spell to cast. A great deal of the trouble is casting. Donnelly stays pert even in the face of black doom; Lane can't connect to the material at all. Happily, though, the younger pair was made to speak this stuff...Occasionally they have a scene together. You wait the whole show for these moments—only in them does Molloy's witchcraft do its work.
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"Seldom as spooky as it wants to be…Molloy's playful language is really the star of the show. It verges on twee in its own bleak Irish way, but its musicality is truly enjoyable. Impressively, the four-person cast never flinches, making Molloy's whimsical poetry seem perfectly natural…Still, one gets the sense that the playwright is not as committed to tone as the design team…By the time the climax comes, it is too over-the-top to take seriously."
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