My Broken Language NYC Reviews and Tickets
About the Show
Production Covid-19 Safety ProtocolsMember Reviews (31)
See it if A memory play. Deals with family struggles. Good staging and acting.
Don't see it if It's movement and pace needs to be worked out. So so direction.
See it if you'd enjoy a memory piece that includes poetry, dance, singing & monologue story telling by five actresses over 90 mins. Good piano player.
Don't see it if if you are looking for a linear play or a musical. Difficulty hearing some actresses when backs were to audience due to theater-in-the-round
See it if poetic script & lively music/dance dramatize H's coming of age as Latina & celebrate variety of PR women who inspired her
Don't see it if b/c organized as series of soliloquies, not fully realized play; skips major issue: how H mediates living btwn white & PR worlds Read more
See it if Parts are funny and interesting, enjoyable to show. Deal with family and learning
Don't see it if I went on second preview night, they were learning new lines. It's a new play
See it if Early previews so some lines had just been written, cast made the best of it; Difficult 2 b in a new country with a language not your own.
Don't see it if You don't enjoy monologues, an all female cast, comradery, overacted soliloquies and generally, a slow moving play.
See it if A creative & poetic staging of a Philadelphia Latina family living life thru many struggles.
Don't see it if If you prefer a musical then skip this one.
See it if Extremely personal broken fragments from her childhood of the women in her family. How they process life thru their culture and bodies.
Don't see it if Multiple actors embody protagonist and family members a little confusing, super personal stories, race/class/misogyny, fragmented plot. Read more
See it if you want a whirlwind 90 minutes of theater combining monologues, movement and music performed by a great cast.
Don't see it if you want a literal play or musical, this might not not be for you. Read more
Critic Reviews (11)
"The show, which honors the many women in Hudes’s maternal line, is a tender collision of scene and image, an impressionistic collage rather than a straightforward biography."
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"4/5 Stars! The show feels more like a party than a play: a family photo album come to vivid, joyous life...Hudes retains the lyrical style of her memoir and infuses it here with dance and live music...Five performers embody her and her kin at different ages, switching comfortably among characters and tongues as the author finds her own voice."
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"Every language on its own is broken, insufficient. But together, in My Broken Language, they make a complete, sublime whole that celebrates a family's life and legacy."
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"The language — which, as the title suggests, is the centerpiece of this theatrical event — ends up being the production's greatest Achilles' heel."
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And, for all the flash and color of Hudes' writing -- a Frank Stella painting described as "a geometric splat," a cousin with a "C-section scar thick as a thumb, bisecting her abdomen from pubes up to navel," the stitches "giving the appearance of caterpillar feet" -- none of the women recalled so vividly ever acquires anything like a character. They remain forever at a remove, appealing subjects for the author's camera eye. And because each member of the company steps in at different times to deliver Hudes' narration, My Broken Language ultimately takes on a curiously disembodied feel.
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"Hudes’ accomplishment is an awe-inspiring monologue for the ages – as is Guevara’s explosive performance of it...Hudes is establishing herself as one of the foremost playwrights increasingly breaking barriers – and diverse barrios."
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Hudes has directed her own play in a delightful vaudeville/musical comedy style with dancing between the scenes to choreography by Ebony Williams to live music played by pianist Ariacne Trujillo-Durand, supervised by Alex Lacamoire. Of the five actresses who perform each in their own inimitable style, three of them have appeared in Hudes’ plays before: Daphne Rubin-Vega and Zabryna Guevara (who play the Author twice each) have appeared in two New York productions and Marilyn Torres has appeared regionally in the Pulitzer Prize-winning, "Water by the Spoonful" at the Old Globe, San Diego. By the end of the evening we feel we have met all of the Perez women as well as know what makes the Author tick.
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The effort, delivered with over-the-top histrionic emphasis, sounding not much different from a hipster poetry slam, allows for considerable choreographic invention, devised by Ebony Williams. Several moments...are striking demonstrations of physical commitment. They fail, though, to supply more than momentary visual distraction to material that could almost as well be read from a podium as performed on a stage.
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