Describe the Night NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (203)
See it if you like historical stories with some spices thrown in; truth or dare situations and great acting by all, especially Tina Benko.
Don't see it if you don't like long plays or political history with mystery; you don't like bits of embellishment thrown into your non fiction; poor ending.
See it if you enjoy wonderful theatre, great staging, and acting.
Don't see it if you want a musical or a simple, linear comedy that's short.
See it if you are more wildly and creatively inclined. You appreciate imagination. Acting is good across the board. Writing is something to witness.
Don't see it if you like more concise and tightly constructed theater
See it if You like historical dramas that move back and forth in time creating an intricate puzzle. This was a complex and beautifully written play.
Don't see it if You don’t like fact and fiction blended, you don’t like themes, and leitmotifs carried forward through different acts. If 3 hrs is too long.
See it if True story and history is your pleasure. playwright, Rajiv Joseph, weaves us through 70yrs creatively.
Don't see it if clocks in at almost 3 hours but it goes by reasonable fast
See it if You like well acted and staged plays. It’s long but the complex plot keeps things moving well.
Don't see it if Russian history as a backdrop would bore you or you don’t like political dramas/thrillers.
See it if You want to see a dazzling political/historical work of dramatic fiction that takes smart artistic license with historical facts
Don't see it if You don't like plays that require you to pay attention and do a little work piecing together plot points.
See it if You’d love a sprawling, epic, everything-is-connected work of historical fiction that makes you want to read more about the play’s events.
Don't see it if You dislike heady plays that bounce around between different time periods and make you feel unsure of if you’re following the plot.
Critic Reviews (32)
“Ambitious, pertinent, resonant, sometimes compelling but often confusing...One can see what Joseph is about here – erasing the boundaries of time...pushing the Stalinist era flush up against the current day...If the production doesn’t hold together as one would wish, you leave wanting to encourage the playwright to keep going with it — to paraphrase ‘Angels of America,’ a comparable but more lucid work of breadth and depth, intelligence and passion: Let the great rework begin.”
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“Ambitious but dramatically unpersuasive and unimpressively acted and directed…The actors, trapped in the play's artificially European atmosphere, cannot make any of this humanly affecting. The worst offender is Grenier, who attempts to sound like a gruff…Russian by continually blasting his lines as if he were acting without a mic in Madison Square Garden…Burstein plays with restraint against this bombast but is unable to translate the dross of his lines into the gold of theatrical reality.”
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“Joseph’s ambitious, epic, and ultimately memorable drama...Sometimes, you will be one step ahead of Joseph, and sometimes, you will be two steps behind. And yes, perhaps you won’t care. But the rewards for those who stick with the work are bountiful. Not only is Joseph’s ultimate solution to this Chinese Puzzle of a play both ingenious and surprising, you will find yourself heading into the night with a rejiggered outlook on the concept of ‘reality’.”
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“Without a doubt, Joseph knows how to tell a sprawling, convoluted tale that spans decades...Slowly and with great craftsmanship, over the course of three hours and many more scenes, Joseph puts the many disparate pieces together to create a broad panoramic portrait of totalitarianism...If that sounds dreary and painful in a Soviet sort of way, Joseph’s soap-opera tendencies make the story anything but...’Grand soap opera or great play, 'Describe the Night' is that rare must-see in the theater."
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“A fact-based epic drama of enormous scope...Rich, fascinating, bulging and unwieldy; Joseph weaves an interesting story, helped along by bravura performances...But while drama of this historic complexity can be highly rewarding, Joseph’s play does not quite succeed...We get a jigsaw-like evening in which you have many complete sections but can’t piece them together...Ambiguity in drama can be effective, but not when you lose your audience during the first act.”
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"An ambitious and complex work...The story jumps around in time and place and challenges the audience to follow along. There are scenes that are quite dramatic, others that are very funny and a few that don’t have much impact but are necessary...While I found the play intellectually satisfying, it did not engage me fully at the emotional level. The characters seem more like pieces of a puzzle than individuals worthy of empathy. Nevertheless, it offers a stimulating theatrical experience.”
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“Joseph creates a weird tapestry of truth and lies in his new drama...This overwhelming saga asks hard questions on the relationships between government and media, citizens and dictators, and how people manage to live through decades of upheaval...The plot stretches credulity but in Joseph’s shadowy world, it doesn’t matter. This is a dreamscape of epic proportions enveloping theatergoers with Joseph’s storytelling magic as it stuns with unrelenting anger at authoritarian monsters.”
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“A strange but often interesting play...The weaving of characters into the different periods can be confusing even though the actors are exceedingly good...Sardelli handles moments of intense conversation with skill...Still, there is something lacking in what the author has tried to do...One might yearn to learn more about Babel with less skipping around to make connections. Ideas clash, and the result is more of an uneasy mix than the searing look at what happened to Babel."
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