Rancho Viejo NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (121)
See it if you're opened to something murky and mysterious with resonant themes
Don't see it if are annoyed by sparse dialogue and stage pauses and no simplistic resolutions
See it if you like quirky relationship plays. Mare Winningham and Mark Blum are outstanding. Excellent supporting cast. Love the first 2 1/2 acts.
Don't see it if you can't sit 3 hrs. I viewed the intermissions as 2 opportunites to leave, but the writing doesn't unravel until the last 1/2 of 3rd act. Read more
See it if you don't mind something with "no plot." this show is much more about the characters and their lives.
Don't see it if You want a play with lots of action/conflict. It's a very uneventful play
See it if You like a good ensemble cast..,relevant to baby boomers although my 40 year old kids liked the show
Don't see it if If you feel 3 hours is JUST TOO LONG!!!
See it if You enjoy a long (almost 3 hrs) slow story of couples interacting in a pretty meaningless story. It left me wondering a lot of things!
Don't see it if You want a story with substance and action or has some depth of meaning
See it if If you like absurdist theatre or long plays that in which nothing happens.
Don't see it if You like a plot, realistic characters, or tight editing.
See it if You like chatty, dialogue-driven plays. The first two acts are entertaining. The third act was very disappointing.
Don't see it if you don't like three hour plays with two intermissions. Also, if you value thematic consistency.
See it if You like slice of life dramedy. There were parts that were funny and parts that were sad. Nobody seemed to have any real emotion, except
Don't see it if "Pete" who was obsessed witht he marriage of the son of one of the couples. THIS SHOW WAS WAY TOO LONG, 3 hours and 2 intermissions.
Critic Reviews (22)
“A needlessly long play...with two intermissions that give playgoers ample opportunity to leave...'Rancho Viejo' occasionally attempts to introduce meaningful discourse into its dialogue, including references to the effect of art on people's lives, and there are scattered bits of amusing banality that highlight LeFranc's take on the emptiness of his characters' existence. These, though, mostly amount to window dressing on a play that takes a long time to say a lot about very little.”
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"LeFranc’s clever and courageous point is that happiness, unhappiness and everything in between are present in the small moments of life...Three hours is nothing when a script is so funny and so true as to how most people conduct themselves...An additional boost is Daniel Aukin’s steady direction of the game cast...This ensemble rates high for its grasp of behaviors that we all catch ourselves in more often than we like to admit...I’m a total sucker for 'Rancho Viejo.'"
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"Three hours of my life I will never get back and I don’t understand why this play was written…Nothing happens, characters do insane things…Nobody in this cast seems to care about acting...Director Daniel Aukin does nothing to make this piece go faster and sitting in the theatre is torture! If I wasn’t reviewing, I would have left after the first act as many did…’Rancho Viejo’ seems more like episodes of a really bad sitcom and at least with that you can turn the TV off."
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"Is this not a living room at all but a communal space or clubhouse that’s meant to signal a geriatric 'Friends'-type living situation? Daniel Aukin’s lax direction keeps us guessing...In time, we learn that the set functions as several characters’ living rooms...This realization, when it comes, is a true disappointment...The only real character development is the neighbors’ ever-deepening lack of interest in Pete and Mary."
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"The play runs too long and has an entire scene in which a character speaks Spanish that is frustratingly time-wasting for anyone who doesn’t understand the language. In Act III, things get weird in scenes in a darkened wilderness. By the end, Pete and Mary have been tentatively accepted into the group. Yet, after negotiating their assimilation, LeFranc ends the play on a tentative note for the couple, suggesting that the process of interacting with other people is a never-ending negotiation."
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"Awful, with a capital 'A'. Underlined three times…What was it, you ask? The material…’Rancho Viejo’ comes from some deep, dark, mysterious place that should never have been explored. The characters are uninteresting, and mysteriously underdeveloped…The dialogue is stilted, slow, and awkward. The conversations are ‘slit-your-wrists’ banal and insipid…Despite the deep deficit in the material, the actors were magnificent…Save yourself from eternal damnation and stay home."
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