Everybody NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (176)
See it if you want to see a new version re:" the meaning of life" There are some nice lighting effects and set design.
Don't see it if if you wish to avoid a dark, dark play fear of death fear of the unknown etc. Note; playbills distributed after the performance
See it if Man I just love Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and would pay to see him expound on all sorts of topics.
Don't see it if You're looking for an answer from the play.
See it if you're a patient theatergoer wanting innately theatrical, risky, flawed but worthwhile work. The production itself is memorable for sure.
Don't see it if you're sitting in the front half and will be irritated constantly turning behind you. Parts are repetitive, but the last scene's worth it.
See it if If you appreciate an ambitious effort to capture something as difficult as human mortality..
Don't see it if You want something crisp and clear.
See it if you enjoy clever theater. There's a puppet show that is amazing. The acting and directing are terrific, and while always funny, it's moving.
Don't see it if you're annoyed by theater that on one level seems obvious. (it's not at all an obvious play- it's allegorical) Or require a traditional show
See it if you want to see a fresh and bold play based on an old morality story that will make you ponder, laugh, and be overall entertained.
Don't see it if you hate unconventional staging which forces a lot of head turning and self-referential/meta elements. Preachy depending on interpretation.
See it if you are looking for a new interpretation of older plays, like immersive theater, want something unexpected.
Don't see it if you like traditional plays, need a story that doesn't involve thinking. Read more
See it if You enjoy being comically entertained during the show and are willing to think a bit afterward
Don't see it if You want to walk out of show and think you've "seen" everything the show offers without additional thought required. Read more
Critic Reviews (37)
"A original and unique experience...I had a hard time staying attuned to the dream-like experience...The gimmick is interesting but slight and definitely not thoroughly intoxicating...The cast does an impressive job engaging in all those roles...It made sense and was witty and funny at times. But I wish I was more fully engaged with my mind and my heart, as the journey that 'Everybody' takes is huge in topic and scope, but this play just didn’t feel big enough. Or deep enough."
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"Ambitious and overstuffed, bristling with both ideas and narrative experiments...It’s messy and multilayered and constantly surprising—which makes it an enormously exciting, or perhaps especially, when the shifting layers bounce awkwardly off each other...Jacobs-Jenkins’s work is consistently original, weird, and thought-provoking, and it’s a pleasure to see a play where you genuinely don’t know, not only what’s going to happen next, but where the action is going to occur."
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"The idea here is inspired, and the world premiere production can be inspiring...'Everybody' can also be very funny. But both the playwright and director Lila Neugebauer seem hell-bent on deliberately 'destabilizing' the story, making it less accessible...The playwright’s shrewdly observed moments apparently seemed insufficient to the creative team, who insisted on lots of extra fiddling...The playwright also gives his characters too much to say that is digressive, repetitious or overlong."
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"Overall, Jacobs-Jenkins’ update is fair to middling. The author has fun with his contemporary tweaking, but slowly, very slowly, the air is let out of the party balloon...He’s trading in the profound, even as he inserts a palpable laugh-line from time to time. But as 'Everybody' goes along on his obsessive journey, the playwright succeeds not at being profound but at being profoundly shallow. Indeed, it’s tough to be profound when a gimmick propels the production."
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"'Everybody' just left me cold. Maybe it's because the actors who were chosen to play the leads were not that great and hard to hear. This surrealistic approach to theatre based on the Medieval morality play 'Everyman' loses something in its adaption...There are 120 different casting possibilities so maybe I had an off night, because I found it hard to connect to this piece and wanted to drift off...Neugebauer does some interesting staging...but for 90 minutes this show drags."
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"Jaded theatergoers in the mood for something completely different should check out Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s new play...It’s remarkable that Jacobs-Jenkins’s wit and invention flag only at the very end...'Everybody' creeps up on you, and you will be charmed — or simply annoyed...Jacobs-Jenkins may not have a lot to say that’s new about life and death and everybody in between, but one thing is for sure. He knows how to create whimsy."
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"This is theatre rather unlike anything you might have seen...'Everybody' tells the same tale, with equal emotional heft; but it is not only provocative and involving, it is also funny...Lila Neugebauer does a wonderful job of spreading 'Everybody' across the Signature’s Irene Diamond Theatre...Perhaps because of this necessarily thorough immersion in the script, the cast does wonderfully well...'Everybody' is very good indeed."
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“Burke’s version of Death is so delightful that it was hard to remember that one should be frightened. Bioh is also a treat as God…The emerging moral seemed muddled. I also think that a lot depends on who is playing Everybody; one reacts differently to the fate of a pregnant woman vs. a white-haired man…Neugebauer directs with assurance. There is cleverness in abundance, but I was not moved. I suspect that those in the production were having a better time than those in the audience.”
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