“A cheerfully instructive work...Even in its bleakest moments, the dialogue is punctuated with the wholesome teasing and perkiness of a family sitcom. The supporting characters, drawn in the same vein...They’re a likably peppy lot, although all that matey ‘yaaargh-ing’ can get a bit tedious. I’m assuming that Ms. Backhaus deliberately shaped her characters in the mold of familiar domestic comedies to underscore their universality...But they seldom register as fully dimensional beings."
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“It’s not fun to criticize a play like 'India Pale Ale,' which so badly wants to be a model of good citizenship and generosity, and falls so dismally theatrically flat. But from its very opening moments, the sketchily drawn story of the Batra family feels confused about everything from tone to intention to narrative focus...It wanders and hiccups and fails to get any sort of real emotional foothold, then latches onto a tragedy in order to catapult its engineless plot forward.."
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"Badly in need of further development...There's very little plot to speak of...There are some amusing moments...But the relentless quirkiness and didactic speechifying reveal a playwright trying much too hard, and neither director Will Davis' amateurish staging nor the ensemble's uneven performances help matters. ‘India Pale Ale’ concludes with a lovely offering to the audience but it's not enough to compensate for the otherwise empty feeling this ‘promising’ work leaves.”
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“A play that has more "teachable moments" than genuine ones...This urgency to moralize only keeps us at arm's length from the family with which we're supposed to be breaking down barriers...The events that unfold neither support each other nor carry their own tension...You feel Backhaus hint at the friction between Americanization and Punjabi tradition, and then immediately withdraw as if to avoid the implication that those two things are incompatible.”
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“’India Pale Ale’ is all exhortation and no drama. The family relationships are not explored, and most of the characters are one-dimensional: The women gossip about relationships while making food, and Boz's brother and ex-boyfriend are a pair of stereotypical bros...In many ways, the play turns on Boz's relationship to her father, but the character barely exists...Everyone is fine, but nobody makes a strong impression...Davis' direction is pacey but lacking in nuance.”
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“What ‘India Pale Ale’ isn't good at is exposition. That, and organization. Jaclyn Backhaus's drama, an immersive plunge into the deep end of Punjabi culture as transplanted to the present-day U.S., has some rewards down the pike, specifically in the handsomeness of MTC’s production and the revealing to us mainstreamers of an unfamiliar, singular subculture. You just have to take some unprepossessing side roads to get to all that...You just wish it were laid out more clearly.”
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“Often lively, certainly sincere but ultimately lightweight play, which is well directed by Will Davis, and obviously produced by Manhattan Theatre Club as an antidote to today’s promulgated-from-the-oval-office divisiveness and its too often-homicidal repercussions...Despite the rather sizable complication, the play slides to a likable and conciliatory but not sufficiently deep, conclusion...There’s no arguing with the cast’s performances or Davis’ overseeing them."
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“A vibrant and authentic portrait of a modern American family. It's magnetically staged...Some exuberant Punjabi dances are as much a part of ‘India Pale Ale's’ authenticity as the Indian foods prepared in the scenes that bookend its first and final act — the first is a celebration, the final one is a more somber attempt to heal the pain of a terrible fact-based event that leaves us to contemplate a poignant and all too relevant message...A first class production.”
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