Perfect Arrangement NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (19)
See it if great story, humor, acting, & characters. My friends and I have taken to calling it "the best play-no qualifiers." I can't praise it enough.
Don't see it if you have a very conservative sense of humor
See it if you want a hilarious play that turns on a dime to become a heart-wrenching drama that is all too close to home
Don't see it if you don't want to be depressed by finding out that many of the issues that were present then are still prevalent today
See it if you want to see a hilarious play about a subject that's rarely talked about that also makes you think
Don't see it if you're not a fan of shows with stressful situations
See it if you're looking for an entertaining evening of 1950s style (dialogue, costumes, setting) with an edge. The cast is fantastic.
Don't see it if you can't get past a few well-intentioned cliches. The ending is heartfelt and true to the style of the piece, but a bit cliched.
See it if You like getting tense with anticipation, knowing things as an audience member that some characters don't know.
Don't see it if You don't want to be immersed (through decor, costumes, dialogue) in the period in which the show takes place.
See it if Terrific performances. Handled a serious topic deftly.
Don't see it if I didn't love the ending. It was a bit cliched.
See it if You appreciate socially relevant stories, are interested in recent history, have strong memories of the 1950's.
Don't see it if You don't enjoy seeing shows with gay characters.
See it if You enjoy dramedies about relationships and stories about the LGBT community and what they faced back in the 1950s.
Don't see it if You don't like stories focusing on the LGBT community.
Critic Reviews (20)
"Mr. Payne is a deft and witty writer...Under Michael Barakiva’s direction, the cast is uniformly appealing and mostly able to negotiate the tonal sashays that the script demands...But so much of the play is so quick and so quippy and so very near farce that more serious discussions of rights and responsibilities don’t land."
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"Contrivances build up, and the ending veers into righteousness. What looked like a 1950s sitcom turns out to be a 1980s sitcom in disguise, capped with liberal messages to applaud. But 'Perfect Arrangement' moves quick and looks nifty. Better yet, it features a pair of really capital performances. Even when the play seems overarranged, they are damn near perfect."
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"An attractive and engaging curiosity...How long they will remain complicit in order to maintain their secret lives is the moral dilemma that gives the 'Perfect Arrangement' unexpected power. It’s lovely to look at — and treacherous as hell."
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"Usually a playwright has to choose between writing a laugh-out-loud comedy and a very serious drama. Topher Payne has written both with 'Perfect Arrangement.' With a stellar cast and zippy direction, this 1950s sitcom-style comedy set during the Lavender Scare (in which sexual 'deviants' were targeted for dismissal from federal employment) manages to keep us in hysterics even as the circumstances become no laughing matter."
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"The sitcom tone smoothly transitions into something more serious and rebellious. 'Perfect Arrangement' is beautifully structured like an episode of I LOVE LUCY that never would have aired. Under Michael Barakiva's snappy direction, the nutty twists and turns are played with crisp comic panasche instead of as a parody, by a terrific ensemble."
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"This is an imperfect 'Perfect Arrangement' -- sometimes sharply witty, sometimes almost leaden in its moralizing, and sometimes too silly for words. It doesn't help that the play climaxes with a come-to-Jesus finale in which too many characters successively realize that honesty is the best policy."
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"There's much that's entertaining and thought-provoking about 'Perfect Arrangement,' but it would be better if Payne didn't himself discard Kitty's lesson so readily. He may have happened on a compelling way to immerse us within the mores of a different time. But by working too hard to connect that era to ours, he forgot that all revolutionaries, like all housewives, are not easily categorized."
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"'Perfect Arrangement' is a witty and engrossing well-made play in its depiction of a life style that now seems foreign in an age of same-sex marriages and openly gay heroes and icons. However, the ending in which the author presupposes a gay civil rights movement, circa 1950, does not ring historically true. Nevertheless, up until the ending, 'Perfect Arrangement' is taut, humorous and absorbing in its use of the most popular dramatic form of the 1950’s, the well-made play."
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