The Moors NYC Reviews and Tickets

"An alternately intriguing and irritating production...Questions tease and tickle throughout 'The Moors,' which as you may have gathered has a high whimsy quotient. But they never acquire much momentum in Mike Donahue’s production...'The Moors' may sometimes feel sloppy, but it’s smart. Watching it is a bit like having a conversation with an ardent and intelligent Brontë devotee, whose passion almost matches that of the pen-wielding sisters who inspired it."
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"Jen Silverman's misfire 'The Moors' does, in truth, take aim at an interesting target...But the play keeps sabotaging itself. When it tries to be mystical, its jokiness undoes it; when it tries to be warm and silly, the story's fog of cruelty chills the air. The play's lowest moments are—as is often the case these days—forced injections of magic realism...Despite some truly great actors in the cast, the tonally confused performances move at a crawl."
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"Erodes the viewer’s patience for whimsy long before it can effectively make an argument or illuminate anything real...The play keeps undermining itself with falseness on the one hand and weak attempts at humor on the other...You can’t really blame the four actors playing humans for not finding a tone that works, nor even the director, Mike Donahue...The fault is in the conception of the story, which wants to have its camp and eat it too."
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"Jen Silverman's laugh-out-loud dark comedy gently spoofs the Brontë sisters while treating us to a humorous (and brutal) take on the instability of gender roles...Silverman and director Mike Donahue have created an atmosphere in 'The Moors' that is at once mysterious, menacing, and savagely funny...Despite a few drowsy moments and an odd fantasy sequence near the end, 'The Moors' delights with its insightful and subversive edginess."
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“Silverman's flat, uninflected voice provides no pleasure whatsoever. It's rather like listening to a humorless academic analyzing a text…Still, the production has a look and sound that establish an effectively creepy mood…‘The Moors’ offers satire without any real verve or wit; Silverman neither suggests what is alluring about the Gothic romance genre nor does she provide a particularly trenchant critique of it....Her depiction of it lacks affection and fresh insight.”
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"The reviews of the Yale production suggest that another mode of both direction and design might have made a difference. As it stands, The Playwrights Realm's staging of 'The Moors' is a failure that might have been avoided, though the play does not go as far as it ought in trying to be a satire of the 19th century novels as written by the great Victorian women authors."
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“A surprising and entertaining play...Silverman’s script mines the comic potential in the Victorian novel’s standard motifs…Director Mike Donahue keeps the action moving at a crisp pace…His cast, without exception, rises to the challenge of playing this bizarre drama…’The Moors’ seems at first like a trifle...But as it progresses, it goes deeper. Ultimately, this wildly entertaining play also manages to say something profound about human nature, social change, and, yes, the power of writing."
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"Some will appreciate Silverman's take on depression, loneliness, longing, literary aspiration, and female bonding, not to mention sibling rivalry and murder on the Victorian moors. On the other hand, despite its excellent ensemble—Birgit Huppuch is especially noteworthy—others will, like me, find it an overlong, cerebral exercise lacking in emotional warmth and consistent interest. I'd suggest that less of 'The Moors'—perhaps 20 minutes less—would be a vast improvement."
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"Silverman's genre-bashing stylistic mishmash is indeed clever and intermittently amusing given its flavorful seasoning of feminism, sadism, plus meditations on happiness and nontraditional love...Realizing this is meant to be a satire, Silverman seemed to work overtime to make us laugh a lot. Consequently, while the cast is admirable, ultimately 'The Moors' is too clever by half to be as successful a riff on Gothic literature as it aims to be."
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“It is this unwillingness of the characters to acknowledge the obvious realities before them that lends ‘The Moors’ its special blend of humor and eeriness…Some parts of the play are not as successful…A story line in which the household’s lonely and existential mastiff meets and falls in love with a moor-hen...expresses some central themes a little too directly...The performances across the board highlight the unearthly wilderness of the moors while still drawing laughs from the audience."
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“The production also gets bogged down by the wide extremes and heady themes it tries to achieve, and the frequent impositions of whimsy and camp…Aided by a talented cast, ‘The Moors’ offers a thoughtful subversion of gender roles, presenting the possibilities of power in a way that challenges and entertains, even if it doesn’t always quite coalesce...Silverman’s play is complicated and messy – but shows why it, too, should be seen.”
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“If you are not familiar with the complete works of the Brontës you may not find this so amusing. I am a huge fan and even that didn’t help me find the macabre humor. The cast is all well suited, with each adding the appropriate tone. The fabulous Ms. Cabell again excels…The direction by Mike Donahue just draws this whole piece out and, in the end, it is the audience who is lost on these moors. This is a smart piece, but needs to be honed and made less frenetic.”
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