"Has anyone ever enjoyed a layover? Either it is nerve-janglingly short or grindingly long. 'The Layover,' a disappointing new play by Leslye Headland, achieves the novel feat of being both at the same time. Running a little more than 90 minutes, it doesn’t succeed in bringing us deeply into the lives of its principal characters. And yet we don’t exactly leave pining for more of their company...Ms. Headland has muffled her comic verve almost completely in this play."
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"Trip Cullman’s gorgeous-looking and boldly acted production delivers the play in optimal form: racy laughs that suddenly trail into passages of eloquent pain and loss...True, the character contrivances required by her plot may rankle afterward—and might have been mitigated by retroactive exposition or a more fragmented performance by Parisse...But with Headland, even when the roof caves in, that seems part of the design—and the fun."
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"The plot becomes etiolated as it scrambles after excuses for itself, and, worse, the characters, constantly reshaped to support a crumbling conceit, wind up resembling, despite the best efforts of the actors Adam Rothenberg and Annie Parisse, no human form. Under Trip Cullman’s direction the supporting cast, given some truly vile material to carry off, doesn’t...The Hitchcockian concept, compounded by its weak execution, reveals a problem: a greater interest in ideas than in people."
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"Headland writes snappy, caustic dialogue—the repartee here is pretty great—yet I found much of what was being said defied credibility...Shellie and Dex seem, ultimately, more like an author’s conceit than actual characters. The abrupt shocker that concludes the play only confirmed my sense that Headland wasn’t in control of the story and, by the end, simply threw in the towel. Or maybe I just didn’t get it. Still, the show was never boring."
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"Leslye Headland’s attempt to write a neo-noir erotic thriller comes up lame in 'The Layover.' Despite the fine sexual chemistry generated by Annie Parisse and Adam Rothenberg, the play can’t overcome the scribe’s clumsy reworking of the vintage formula. Lacking those generic plot thrills, this half-baked erotic teaser is no more than mildly entertaining."
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"The author's ambitions slip out of her grasp as she attempts to riff on the kind of adulterous intrigue that was the domain of Patricia Highsmith...The result is a play that resembles a hijacked flight, taking too many jerky detours before crashing…The play's logic has begun to crumble well before its misjudged final scene...Nothing that comes before suggests that was the story Headland set out to tell, making 'The Layover' seem both ill-conceived and thematically incoherent."
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"This is a case of style over substance...While Headland is clearly a smart writer, it feels as if she's over-reaching with this story, contriving more depth than the narrative can handle...Cullman’s compelling staging compensates for the play’s weaknesses with excellent technical designs and a splendid cast. Annie Parisse and Adam Rothenberg engage us from start to finish, even as the play veers off course. Bottom line: it’s a first class production of an economy class play."
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"A beguiling and unsettling new play…By adopting and then slowly subverting this well-worn genre, Headland slyly exposes just how toxic our societal narratives of ‘love at first sight’ and the grand gesture can be…Headland asks some very important questions about the incongruity between reality and the stories we tell ourselves…These questions will nag you as you leave the theater and beyond."
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