"Much painstaking rehearsal and synchronization of cues, for the tech crew as well as the performers, has gone into 'Everybody.' Yet it still feels like a work in progress, waiting to be sharpened into focus...Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins has made a virtue of his anxieties about identity in meta-theatrical plays that turn traditional forms inside out. Here, though, such self-consciousness curdles, despite some amusing 'who’s on first'-style circular dialogue on weighty subjects."
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"Apart from the cast’s charm and visual coups engineered by director Lila Neugebauer, the 100-minute experiment feels overlong and talky...Lord knows we don’t need a 'faithful' revival of this theatrical fossil, but I’m not sure this slangy, digressive gloss adds much substance. Stranded between cosmic earnestness and a collegiate urge to interrogate weird old texts, 'Everybody' has trouble holding onto a fixed identity."
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“A terrific production…The play is trenchant, certainly, and often quite moving…By the end, despite Jacobs-Jenkins’s tricks and Neugebauer’s staging savvy ‘Everybody’ offers only its destabilization, and a decidedly weak-tea moral…That’s the problem with genre writing: Most of what can be said meaningfully in a form has already been said by those who needed to invent it. It’s not so much that Jacobs-Jenkins has crashed the party, fun as it may be; it’s that he’s arrived too late.”
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"This gifted and uncategorizable playwright’s spin on 'Everyman.' And spin it is, with the 10 actors being assigned roles according to a lottery near the beginning of each performance. They are great company. The show, on the other hand, is sophomoric nonsense and quickly wears out its welcome. My own mind wandered to Salzburg, where a new interpretation of the 15th-century fable is performed each summer under the hot hot Austrian sun."
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"Five actors, of various race and gender, rotate in the part that is assigned in a pre-performance lottery. It’s an interesting gambit, though more so for the cast than theatergoers...Goofy glow-in-the-dark 'Jason and the Argonauts'-style skeletons energize the talky, sometimes trying show."
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"Something is inevitably lost in adapting the material for a modern audience that has outgrown its fear and awe of hellfire and damnation. But the story retains some power on a human level...Except for a dramatic appearance by two giant skeletons working the side aisles of the house, no serious attempt has been made to adapt medieval theatrical conventions for modern times — although God herself knows that we mortals are just as selfish and greedy as our medieval ancestors."
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"Despite clever moments, 'Everybody' proves a trial to sit through...For all its artistic ambitions, 'Everybody' turns out to be confusing and disjointed, filled with stylistic diversions that more often than not prove underwhelming...The revolving casting feels like a gimmick and has some unfortunate results...Ultimately, 'Everybody' fails in its goal to make its themes universal and its centuries-old inspiration feel contemporary."
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"At turns ambitious, witty, and a bit dull...Solid performances still don't fully rescue the play from its didactic origins. Dress a medieval morality play up in 21st-century slang and it comes off sounding like a skit for incoming college freshman performed by the resident assistants of purgatory...Nothing in director Lila Neugebauer's high-design production quite rises to the tone set in those austere first 10 minutes, but it is often very impressive."
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