Engagements NYC Reviews and Tickets

"A bitingly funny but overly sour comedy...Teitler writes tangy dialogue rich in sharp-witted repartee...The slim plot seems stretched thin by the end of the play, which runs only 80 minutes. And with principal characters as unrelievedly bitchy as Lauren and caddish as Mark, there’s little chance of the audience’s becoming emotionally engaged. Still, it has been crisply directed by Kimberly Senior and the cast members bring a bright sheen to their performances that energizes the proceedings."
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“Finger-food theater: tasty enough in nibbles but leaves you wanting more and is forgotten soon after eating...Teitler’s bitchy banter and metatheatrical asides strive for wit and pathos but mainly prod along an ordinary tale of epigram-spouting narcissists who behave badly and learn to own their damage. During the scene changes in Kimberly Senior’s leaden production, the actors groove to DJ standards. Those dance sequences look like the most fun they have all night.”
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"The acting is polished. The direction is smart. The production values are excellent. But all this well-crafted effort seems wasted on showcasing this deadly comedy by Lucy Teitler about the childish antics of a group of shallow people with nothing better to do than knife each other in the back...While the scribe does have a modest gift for snarky dialogue, she’s squandered it on an aimless play about deeply unlikable characters that give their generation a very bad name."
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"There is something classical about Teitler's style, a trait that director Kimberly Senior takes full advantage of...'Engagements' is a fascinating mess, overflowing with big ideas that are only half-conveyed. Formally, it cannot quite decide what it wants to be. By the second half, the plot seems to jump the tracks. Still, it is never boring. On top of that, by the end Teitler takes a loathsome protagonist and makes us actually like her (or at least understand her)."
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"'Engagements' is little more than 90 minutes of snark posing as wit…The director, Kimberly Senior, manages to establish a hard, artificial style, but she can't supply the missing humor or character interest…A fair amount of talent is being put to extremely trivial use...'Engagements' wants to be an acid-washed study of modern sexual manners, but it ends up being a reverse etiquette guide, a study in rudeness that quickly wears out its welcome."
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"'Engagements' is both deeper than you might expect and shallower than you might hope for...Despite the abundance of fine detail in the writing, much of the dialogue has a stilted, scripted quality that dispels a fair amount of the contemporary magic the play otherwise works so hard to generate. Even so, Kimberly Senior has directed with sharpness and an ear for comedy, and the actors generally follow her lead."
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"Teitler invites you to see the darker side of romantic relationships and how marriage commitments can be undone in a wink...The play comes off, largely because of the creative acting and directing...Kimberly Senior, who helms this production, knows how to move things along, and executes seamless transitions from one scene to the next...This New York mounting is excellent. By all means, go with a date, or go alone to this provocative play."
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“Teitler’s concept is a clever one. ‘Engagements’ cruises along at a clipper pace when it sticks to its basic premise, but when it tries to work in Ryan and Catherine it slows to a crawl...The witty banter becomes a one-way street, making it a lot less witty. Director Kimberly Senior has not figured out how to attain equilibrium when Ryan and Catherine are onstage...At its best, ‘Engagements’ is outrageously funny, but as it progresses it shows less and less of its best.”
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