Plano NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (65)
See it if you enjoy downtown, experimental theater
Don't see it if you don't enjoy avant-garde shows, or want your shows to always have clear answers
See it if You want a singular (good!) production that does justice to a singular (good!) script
Don't see it if You like your theater slow & easy
See it if If you like amazingly fast, structurally inventive plays that take on and explore conventions in a fascinating way.
Don't see it if If you only like straightforward, realistic plays.
See it if You like deeply strange, unusual takes on social power structures.
Don't see it if You get frightened or have no patience for absurdist, Pirandello-ish imagery
See it if you enjoy downtown, experimental theater
Don't see it if you don't enjoy avant-garde shows, or want your shows to always have answers
See it if You have an adventurous and open mind. Like energetic and mindbending surrealism. Have an interest in plays about family dynamics.
Don't see it if Need linearity and clarity, Are frustrated by surrealism. Read more
See it if A play that is odd and humorous. I think the playwright is the only person who can intelligently describe what we see onstage. Great cast
Don't see it if You are looking for a traditional play with an easy to follow story. Clubbed Thumb promotes plays that are" strange,funny, and provocative." Read more
See it if A frenetic, spinning top of a play where nightmares multiply and the action never settles. Great especially on gender, and never precious.
Don't see it if It never settles - so at certain moments, I wanted the play to knock me down, to bowl me over, which it consistently refuses to do.
Critic Reviews (5)
"To the women in Will Arbery’s sly, elusive, off-kilter comedy, the male presence is a loud, insistent thing...Mr. Arbery’s script is rich with laugh lines...'Plano' toys with language, form and expectations, and the excellent cast savors its elisions and tonal fluxes. The slight bagginess and perplexity of its second half has to do with problems left unsolved, and how to clearly depict women who define themselves by the male presences in their lives...Still, it has a winning playfulness."
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"The first 15 minutes of Arbery’s 'Plano' are experimental-theater perfection. They move like lightning. They’re hilarious...If other parts of this high-weird comedy don’t have the same precision and surprise, it may be because the first moments have worked too well...It’s delicious to see a playwright binding genres so confidently (body-double horror and rueful family comedy), but the real pleasure is in how much 'Plano' manages to bend how you perceive reality beyond the proscenium."
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"Arbery’s wonderfully unsettling 'Plano' is a kind of inside-out play: it goes so far into the uncanny, protean mind’s eye that it comes out the other side, revealing all sorts of disturbing social truths...Silverman, Finn, and Flood feed each other, and feed 'off' each other, with electric energy and precision. They create a pulsing, spinning three-atom molecule at the center of the play, which is as funny as it is powerfully disturbing."
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"Astoundingly, this whirlwind production...maintains its fevered pace to the very end. More plot unfolds in the 75 minutes of 'Plano' than appears in many novels...In his stylized, often hilarious, and just as often tragic way, Arbery presents a vision of life that is just a series of expository scenes...Under Reynolds's careful guidance, the cast executes Arbery's verbal gymnastics as if they were Olympic medalists...Arbery introduces himself as an exciting new voice on the New York stage."
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“Three sisters...reminisce over 30 years of their lives on their front porch in Dallas...Simple premise. Not so simple next hour as things are not what they seem...There is a plot twist...Pay close attention. This is fast moving. As the audience left the theater, they tried to figure out what had just transpired. Fasten your seat belts and get ready to laugh and be surprised...You will love the play.”
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