Office Hour NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (124)
See it if You'd want to watch one teacher try to get through to a troubled student and all the things she really tries. 90 minutes flies by.
Don't see it if You don't have earplugs, as there is a particularly loud moment (that goes on for a while) towards the end.
See it if You would like a stimulating experience ripped from today’s headlines. This play will disturb you and have you discussing it with friends.
Don't see it if It hits too close to home as the subject matter involves potential violence.
See it if you want to see a thought-provoking play about identity and race and family and being seen. Clever staging, too.
Don't see it if you are scared by loud noises or want a light evening out. This is an EXTREMELY intense performance.
See it if Exploration of a potential school shooter that plays with our perceptions, stereotypes and fears to explore how we can find understanding
Don't see it if you're looking for a light comedy or don't like plays which remain ambiguous. What-if scenarios & unanswered questions, but that's the point
See it if You enjoy highly relevant, topical thrillers, especially those that toy with both the audience’s and the characters’ perceptions of reality.
Don't see it if You can’t stand edge-of-your-seat, intense plays where you’re constantly waiting for a gun to go off.
See it if you want a heart-stopping 90 minutes that asks the tough questions.
Don't see it if you're squirmy around guns.
See it if you want to see a play that brings up the very important topic of gun violence and teenage angst.
Don't see it if you want to see a play that gives answers to the important topics it brings up. Read more
See it if You have an interest in an examination of the the struggles of growing up as an outsider, and not fitting in.
Don't see it if You do not care for sitting on the edge of your seat, or considering issues which never troubled you growing up.
Critic Reviews (25)
“If you remove from the story the threat of violence and its fulfillment, there’s very little story left...Cho tries to finesse this structural problem by introducing a meta-theatrical game of three-card monte...It’s hard to pay attention either way, because so many of the vignettes end in varieties of violence..Technically, the production is extremely skillful — you might even say cunning — at producing that response...But the question remains: effective to what end?”
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“'Office Hour' is physically difficult to sit through. Part of that reaction is a judgment on its quality...But you may also be experiencing something like a literal fight-or-flight response...Cho’s 'All in the Timing'–style conceit spirals into absurdity, and the audience laughs uncertainly...If this horror were in the service of penetrating insights about school shootings, it might be valuable, even necessary. But ’Office Hour’ doesn’t earn its ending; it has nothing to teach."
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“Has moments that feel vital, honest, and valuable. It’s also built around a scenario that I find deeply questionable, perhaps even irresponsible...At its most effective moments, 'Office Hour' is interested not only in the question of gun violence, but in the painful, isolating struggle faced by the children of immigrant parents in this country...The climax overwhelms the rest of the play to a destructive degree. It feels like a cruel trick on an audience who came willing to listen."
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"Couldn’t be more timely...Cho seems more interested in a conventional teacher-with-a-savior-complex melodrama than a serious exploration of the larger issue, and that’s where 'Office Hour' comes up short...Unfortunately, even as played by the very game Kim, Gina is, to put it kindly, a flibbertigibbet with boundary issues who could probably drive Bambi to violence. The inevitable Armageddon seems both tasteless and dramatically unearned."
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"Sue Jean Kim gives a remarkably controlled performance...Cho is a confident writer, Gina is a gutsy character and Kim is a self-possessed performer...Cho’s smart, civilized dialogue occasionally seems tone deaf. Unless director Neel Keller is deliberately playing against the written text and reaching for the subtext."
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“The dialogue too often feels contrived and artificial, designed to make sociological points rather than convey three-dimensional characters...The playwright indulges too often in the sort of narrative fake-outs that are certainly shocking but eventually prove wearisome in their repetitiveness. ‘Office Hour’ is most incisive in its quieter, subtler moments...May not tell us anything we don't already know...But it certainly makes you feel like you've been in the presence of one.”
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“Disappointingly, ‘Office Hour’ begins to resemble a therapy session...Everyone onstage has a good cry and we tear up a bit from sheer boredom. It feels like an easy way out...We are briefly jolted to attention by a sequence of rapid-fire scenes imagining all the horrible ways a shooting could happen...Then something incredible happens: We get used to it...Whether by design or not, our reaction to what should be a traumatizing scene is the most disturbing revelation of the play."
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"A tense and extremely well thought out play...Both Kim and Lee are excellent. The playwright allows for gradual connections to be made between them...What is so gripping about the play and the production is the ever-present fear of horrific violence that permeates the space, even as sympathy grows for Dennis...Cho effectively calls for compassion and outreach from a society that commonly creates violent loners out of troubled children."
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