"Ms. Baker stretches her talents in intriguing if sometimes baffling new directions. The membrane between life and death, the world of things and the realm of spirits, seems strangely permeable in Ms. Baker’s appealingly odd — and perhaps less appealingly long — drama...The dialogue in 'John,' orchestrated with intuitive delicacy by Sam Gold, proceeds in the natural fits and starts of lifelike conversation...The acting is exquisitely honed and artifice-free."
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"Baker has written a deeply mysterious drama, with a thematic patterning that seems to warp and dissolve as each act progresses. At times 'John' seems to be a study of the inner lives of objects...Like much in the cozy yet unnerving world Baker has created here—her most formally experimental to date—I don’t quite get the significance. But if I lower the lights and wait, some glimmering form might appear around the corner."
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"The performances, led by Ms. Engel, are exquisite...While I appreciate Ms. Baker’s intention to create active silence onstage, as opposed to filling each moment with dialogue, in this case the effort turns back on itself and the action begins to implode. We end up remembering the pauses instead of the characters who shared them...Ms. Baker is on a roll. Perhaps as she gathers speed her dialogue pacing will pick up steam as well. One can hope."
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"The play is haunted. It is also so expansive that it becomes, in the third act, when you want it to buckle down, a bit unsatisfyingly diffuse. I sense that this is intentional. Baker is interested in the grace that may accompany great age and suffering, but why leave it there...? With no special effects except that player piano, she’s produced a real ghost story, which is to say a semblance of life."
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"'John' is so good on so many levels that it casts a unique and brilliant light...Baker returns us to the naturalistic but soulful theatre that many of her contemporaries and near-contemporaries have disavowed in their rush to be 'postmodern.' With 'John,' Baker has done something exceptional on a political level, too: she has declared her ambition. The truth is that it’s still an anomaly for women artists to claim this kind of space for themselves and their work."
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"I loved the four oddball, disconnected people in it and the way their stories intersect, carom off one another and then refuse to neatly resolve...The beauty and the point of 'John' is not the conclusion but the journey as these four make and break connections and struggle to make them again...The Gold/Baker collaboration is impeccable and the performances are as true-to-life — even as predictable — as the unfolding tale they tell. You shouldn’t miss it."
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"It’s a great setting for the scary story that we long to hear. But as one would-be storyteller sheepishly admits, 'I can only do build-up to scary, not scary itself.' Sadly, that’s the problem here...The only takeaway from all the buildup is the strong intimation that Jenny is getting ready to break up with Elias for treating her like an inanimate object. And while it’s a valid conclusion to draw about a character, we could have had this whole conversation in a coffee shop."
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"This is a big show — three hours and change dealing with love and relationships and sadness — but also a humble, cerebral one, without bells and whistles...'John' is recognizably a Baker play, her characters trying to figure out how to exist with each other, with wise insights inside mundane observations, comfortable with long pauses and a slow pace...It is thoughtful, however, and softly mesmerizing as these characters slowly reveal themselves."
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