Endlings NYC Reviews and Tickets

77%

(27 Reviews)

Positive

85%

Mixed

Negative

Members say

Ambitious, Thought-provoking, Clever, Absorbing, Great staging

About the Show

On the Korean island of Man-Jae, three elderly women spend their dying days diving to harvest seafood. Across the globe, a Korean-Canadian playwright wrestles with the expectation that she write “authentic” stories."

From the show:

On the Korean island of Man-Jae, three elderly haenyeos—sea women—spend their dying days diving into the ocean to harvest seafood. Across the globe on the island of Manhattan, a Korean-Canadian playwright, twice an immigrant, spends her days wrestling with the expectation that she write “authentic” stories about her identity. This “fascinating, audacious and deftly satirical” new play by Celine Song, directed by Sammi Cannold, questions what we inherit and challenges who dictates the terms.

Member Reviews (27)

The first hour of this play was very interesting, the story of three old korean women (haenyeos) who dive in the ocean daily to collect seafood, arduous work for meager pay. but the remaining 40 hours were unbearable, awkward, excruciating, & boring.

See it if you have an interest in the subsistence-level island life in South Korea and the preservation of SK's rapidly vanishing traditional culture.

Don't see it if you dislike plays that are insistently META and self-referential and self-indulgent. Read more

During previews

Excruciating

See it if you want some kind of experimental theater and are not easily bored. This play is vaguely about race, culture, and being a writer.

Don't see it if you want to be entertained by a coherent story.

Critic Reviews (8)

"In ‘Endlings,’ the Pain of Swimming Between Worlds: What do Korean divers and Manhattan playwrights have in common? A new play looks for the connection."
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3/5 Stars. "These divers turn out to be red herrings for the bigger fish that Song is out to fry: herself, her creative process, and the systems supporting this very play. Although the result is less than cohesive, 'Endlings' is a bold and revealing act of autofiction."
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"Every Day a Little Death: 'Endlings' and 'Unknown Soldier'"
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"Diving for Metatheatrical Satire in Endlings: Celine Song's poison-pen letter of a play makes its New York premiere at New York Theatre Workshop"
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"The most inventive creative team can't paper over the fact that 'Endlings' is constructed out of two narrative stands that lead nowhere."
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"Since this is ultimately a play about real estate, where we should live. But you'll be thinking about Song's ocean-diving women long after you've stopped worrying about whether her integrity's intact. What a shame she didn't dig a little deeper into the play that actually means something."
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4/5 Stars. "Celine Song's fascinating and wonderfully complicated new play is clever and self-aware, in on its own joke, but also deeply serious."
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