Evanston Salt Costs Climbing NYC Reviews and Tickets
About the Show
Production Covid-19 Safety ProtocolsMember Reviews (81)
See it if The set and how it is used is amazing as is the acting; small town, small lives, personal problems and nowhere to go with them for relief.
Don't see it if If you're looking for a joyous play this is not for you. It is deep with a sense of dread throughout, yet lots of comradery and some laughs.
See it if You want to see another masterpiece by Will Arbery. A great drama about real life people
Don't see it if You are looking for a light piece of theater or if you are not willing to work for the reward at the end of the rainbow. Read more
See it if you want to see perhaps the best play about the pandemic and are willing to do the work to understand it. (It may take multiple viewings)
Don't see it if you want simply to be entertained. This play requires a major effort by audience members to understand it. Read more
See it if Ken Leung's amazing! Very neurotic townies each processing climate crisis and change in their own way. Loneliness, sense doom, overwhelm.
Don't see it if Climate change doom/depression, experimental theater bits, weird characters, profanity aren't your thing. 1 hour 50 minutes; no intermission Read more
See it if great acting in a play that is relevant today. focus on characters.
Don't see it if want a big story - this is essentially just about these people.
See it if you love Arbery’s work and are open to experimentation with the bounds of realism.
Don't see it if you have to be able to draw neat lines through linear narratives.
See it if you want super talented actors & are willing to be patient with a unique piece about the mundane getting destroyed by society--funny AND sad
Don't see it if you aren't ready for a very sad piece--plus there is lots of discussion/obsession about suicide. And you aren't into High absurdism.
See it if You can find value in a character driven existentialist drama with lots of humor. Don't be put off by the title!
Don't see it if You need a traditional plot. Read more
Critic Reviews (8)
“ 'Evanston' has moments of grace and sympathy, mostly owing to the conviction of its performers. Each goes all-in on the characters’ failings, neuroses and flashes of generosity."
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"It’s perfect — dreadful and hilarious — considering this brilliant, 95-minute, one-act tragicomedy takes place over three recent Illinois winters, all rushing toward the climate apocalypse."
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"By the end, we feel almost as though we're in a different play altogether as a character mysteriously disappears and we witness fantastical twists of plot that might have seemed ingenious on paper but that don't fare well onstage."
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For all the alarm on display, not much happens in Evanston Salt Costs Climbing. Arbery deserves credit for getting at the profoundly upsetting issue of ecological disaster, tying it to a more general sense that society is drifting, aimlessly, toward ruin. But his play ends up chasing its own tail, pursuing the same points repeatedly, to diminishing effect. By the time Jane Jr. once again asks, "Do you think there's something underneath everything that wants us to die?" the thought has lost its power to provoke. This, I suspect, is not what the playwright intends
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"In Will Arbery's strange and wonderful play 'Evanston Salt Costs Climbing,' the impending doom of climate change, economic precariousness, and urban decay are not merely abstract concerns.They are dark and stultifying forces that can make even time go out of whack."
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Will Arbery’s "Evanston Salt Costs Climbing" (set in the city in which the author received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2015) is a perplexing experience as it shifts from realism to absurdism to surrealism. Its worthy topic of ecology and climate change notwithstanding, the play’s repetitiousness and unprepared-for events are frustrating as well as the missing backstories. While it begins interestingly enough, it very quickly turns tedious and inexplicable. A noble experiment, "Evanston Salt Costs Climbing" is either for the select few or needs a rewrite or second draft.
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"There is anxiety, pressing against the rib cage, and grief that renders a body immobile, and the plain, dead weight of existential dread...these forces are lassoed into a lively and captivating 100 minutes of theater, even when time itself becomes unmoored."
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It adds up to an imaginative blend of workplace drama, climate-change allegory and existential plaint. Well, imaginative or exhaustingly offbeat—one’s perceptions may vary, and they might affect your appreciation for the play.
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