Sundown, Yellow Moon NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (71)
See it if You like well written, thoughtful drama. This family story was moving and entertaining. The music was lovely. The acting was terrific.
Don't see it if You prefer lighthearted theater. You don't like family dramas.
See it if you like strong character development, moving stories, great acting an meticulous directing.
Don't see it if you don't want to be moved.
See it if You want to see a unique and intimate story. All of the actors were terrific. I loved the way that music was used in the story.
Don't see it if ...You like big production values. I thought the set was very clever and was all that was needed, but it is simple. Read more
See it if You enjoy true to life drama with interesting music incorporated into the play.
Don't see it if You need earphones when you go to the theater.Some of the dialogue is hard to hear.
See it if You yearn for theater that moves you, where actors live their roles and the border between theater and life dissolves in compassionate words
Don't see it if You want to sit back and be distant and observe theater as amusing or entertaining, but you don't want to be moved or touched or saddened. Read more
See it if you don't mind a long, slow amble through a series of summer nights, in which nothing happens and everything happens and redemption happens.
Don't see it if You need a lot of plot, action or twists. This is a very low key work.
See it if you like shows that are thoughtful
Don't see it if if you want a large revue
See it if you like sensitive writing (Rachel Bond) and focus on relationships vs.plot. Strong cast, great directing...funny-sad songs by the Bengsons.
Don't see it if you want fluff or big production values. Intimate play in an intimate setting. Worth it just for the music. Read more
Critic Reviews (14)
"A beautifully acted production, directed with probing sensitivity by Anne Kauffman...How these people connect — and don’t — is given exquisitely tentative and awkward physical life...The cast is expert at conveying the self-consciousness that comes with such bumbling attempts. Each performer elicits a poignant eloquence from silence. Sometimes, though, those silences are filled with the irresistibly plaintive tones of down-home folk songs."
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"Rachel Bonds’s short-storyish drama has lovely moments of reconnection, rendered with aching understatement by an excellent cast...As a whole, the play—which includes several original songs by the indie-folk duo the Bengsons—is oddly shaped and weighted, with a denouement that doesn't seem supported by what proceeds it. But although it doesn’t quite come together in the end, it casts a slender, evocative light."
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"Bonds knows her characters inside and out, but so do we. This coming-of-age story never really enlightens the audience with new insight...It's a shame, since there is so much promise in the work. Bonds has otherwise created a series of intriguingly flawed characters, played with nuance by the seven-member company...But the show really belongs to Friedman...Friedman's astonishing slow burn is the almost irrevocably broken heart of the entire piece."
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“Insistently, maddeningly elliptical, 'Sundown, Yellow Moon' is the stuff of a short story, or perhaps a novel -- not a satisfying drama. Everything is mentioned in passing and nothing is developed in Bond's script, with far too much of its brief, ninety-minute running time taken up with songs, by The Bengsons, which fail to illuminate the action. Anne Kauffman's direction can do nothing to impose any order on these shambling proceedings.”
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"The play's structure is unruly, with several turns of plot that are inexplicable and lots of narrative loose ends. As directed by the masterful Anne Kauffman, Bonds' dialogue sounds at crucial moments like overheard conversation. But some passages are so banal that they suggest authorial contempt for the character speaking...Kauffman and her cast do an admirable job with the script they've been given, and the effect is always engaging but seldom touching."
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"With a meandering plot line and slow pacing, 'Sundown, Yellow Moon' is like a beautiful, thoughtful, but ultimately unsatisfying summer evening—one where you go to sleep with a headache, if you sleep at all...A great sense of worry pervades the show, though untethered from any real urgency it exists more as an amorphous tension and sadness...Performances are strong throughout the talented cast...The play is at its strongest when it celebrates little life moments."
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“Largely a convincing drama…While most moments of tension fly by on a pretty even keel, Peter Friedman really pumps up the volume. His anguish seems quite raw, and his connection to his daughters is unmistakably genuine…Director Anne Kauffman creates an entirely believable world, with enough charm and dimension. Similarly, playwright Rachel Bonds proves to be a solid writer, capable of carrying a firm story…‘Sundown, Yellow Moon’ is a hit.”
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"A softly-glowing night-light of a narrative, a beacon of memory illuminating a forgotten childhood hallway...Each character receives a well-developed setup which invites us into their personal experience of this particular, but nameless lost feeling...The play feels a bit more like a first act than complete gesture–the exposition is so carefully set in place and well crafted that it is a bit startling when the play ends without really knocking down anything that it set up for us."
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