Peerless NYC Reviews and Tickets

73%

(92 Reviews)

Positive

74%

Mixed

21%

Negative

Members say

Clever, Entertaining, Great acting, Funny, Ambitious

About the Show

A dark comedy based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth and set in the world of elite college admissions.

This clever and incisive adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy updates the story by centering it on M and L, twin Asian-American siblings who have given up everything to get into The College. When another classmate (who happens to be one-sixteenth Native American) claims what they feel is rightfully “their spot,” the twins find themselves resorting to murder.

Jiehae Park, the playwright of 'peerless,' is a 2019/20 Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Primary Stages. This satire made The Kilroys’ 2015 List of the best new plays by female playwrights.

Margot Bordelon ('…what the end will be,' 'Eddie and Dave') directs.

Member Reviews (92)

Great effects, Draggy parts, Edgy, Great acting, Clever

See it if for snappy dialogue, plot twists, dark themes, strong acting, creative directing, gr prodn values (lighting, set, costume, sound). Polished.

Don't see it if you want full engagement. Some scenes drag. 10-15 min could be cut. Still, it's funny, edgy. Parallels to MacB are clever.

Great staging, Disappointing, Cliched, Banal, Ambitious

See it if you like madcap shows that supposedly have a point to make.Show is more staging than plot.I didn't care about the characters or story.

Don't see it if you are looking at a rational play about the ridiculously competitive world of college admissions.That's a terrific topic.Play is a bore.

Slow, Edgy, Clever, Ambitious, Confusing

See it if A show with great banter and a super premise that is fast paced but excruciatingly slow-- what an odd dichotomy.

Don't see it if Confusing, quirky, eerie, weird, poetic, and simply odd. I wish I liked it more.

Fat-shaming, Dark, Clever, Great acting

See it if Clever concept reusing MACBETH. Great acting.

Don't see it if A little slow. And fat-shaming, the last permitted prejudice. I have a thing about rodents so that may have marred my judgement.

Entertaining, Ambitious

See it if You like dark satire. You like stories about “unlike-able” protagonists.

Don't see it if You don’t like rhythmic rapid fire dialogue. Read more

Clever

See it if like a clueless type take on Macbeth with very poetic dialogue that is often fun.

Don't see it if Mind unnatural sounding dialogue and a bit of a modern ending that feels like a cop out to me.

Edgy, Cliched, Macbeth with mean girls, Great acting, Entertaining

See it if you like modernized Shakespeare, great acting, spare productions.

Don't see it if you don't like tragicomic horror or cliches about ruthless overachievers.

Inventive, Entertaining, Delightful, Clever, Absorbing

See it if you'd get a rush from a sly riff on MACBETH that comes with idiosyncratic poetry well-played, well-dressed, well-appointed & well staged.

Don't see it if you're triggered by fat-shaming rants, get freaked out by too-realistic death-scenes or require copious amounts of stage blood for tragedy. Read more

Critic Reviews (6)

"The production suggests a richer and spikier play about the ways in which members of Gen Z rehearse, perform and weaponize identity, and about the sacrifices that we make in the present to secure an increasingly insecure future."
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"Park stylizes her play with repetitive dialogue and rhythmic patter that sets the nerves so on edge that you can't help but feel immediately threatened."
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"Director Margot Bordelon mostly manages to pace things well, but peerless either needs to be cut back or expanded to avoid what seems to be a hastily managed ending to a relatively strong beginning."
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"At an intermissionless 80 minutes, peerless is too long...Yet one more reason to take in peerless is its giving stage time to the increasingly pressing topic of affirmative action, now on the radical Supreme Court 2022-23 docket."
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"Park’s script is spare and taut, with not a wasted syllable...The production elements, too, are crisp and striking, in simple, saturated colors."
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Unlike Macbitches, which talked about Macbeth but didn’t borrow its plot, Peerless does feature a protagonist nudged toward unscrupulous behavior by the person closest to them. ... Park didn’t write in iambic pentameter, but her dialogue has its own distinctive rhythm: short, sometimes single-word lines spoken in a rat-a-tat cadence, with characters often finishing each other’s sentences or cutting them off.
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Trailer

Creative team