The Wholehearted NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (16)
See it if you are drawn to staged versions of real-life stories that chronicle a person's struggles and victories. Suli Holum as Deb is mesmerizing.
Don't see it if you dislike solo performances, multimedia productions and stories that involve emotional pain. Read more
See it if Champion lady boxer grapples with life after her attempted murder. Will her desire for revenge or love win out? Unique staging & musicality
Don't see it if You wouldn’t like a non-linear solo virtuoso performance. Confusing tone matches the struggle of the character. Some violence and nudity.
See it if This production is highly energetic. The actress impeccably tells her story,shifting from boxing, to singing or videotaping herself.
Don't see it if You don’t like one person shows, great singing and acting or is homophonic.
See it if You like one- person shows, great acting and singing.
Don't see it if You're looking for a cohesive plot you can follow easily. Read more
See it if you like not knowing what’s coming next, unfamiliar subjects (this doesn’t resemble any boxing movie I know of)
Don't see it if you need to feel confident that you’re reacting appropriately Read more
See it if You like one women shows with uninventive storyline But pretty good acting and singing
Don't see it if You’re sleepy
See it if You like non-linear theater with an interesting point of view with music
Don't see it if You don’t like sports, singing, or one person shows.
See it if Like a tone poem of a play -- it's a one woman musical about violence. Really interesting use of video and documentary footage.
Don't see it if Felt like sort of a wash, the experience of watching it was much like the closed circuit televisions. I felt emotionally cut off from it.
Critic Reviews (9)
"A fast-jabbing fantasy where sweaty physicality rubs up against shape-shifting surreality...Holum gives a clear and lithe performance, and the production design is excellent. But the show as a whole feels skimpy and incomplete, touching too briefly on too many charged elements and allowing too little space for Holum’s winsome humor to break through. For all the kinetic energy of the staging, the story seems stalled...on the verge of action but not taking it just yet."
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"The play provides a chance to marvel at Holum's technical precision, and her ability to move quickly to extraordinary heights of emotion...Thematically, the creators are asking us to meditate on the varieties of self-destruction. But practically, they're asking us to watch a woman swap accents and punch herself out—a staging choice that sometimes sails past tragedy and crashes into the rocky shores of absurdity. It's a fight even Dee can't win."
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"A messy look at one woman's rags-to-riches journey...An odd, jumbled piece interspersed with musical numbers that don't quite fit...The transitions can be clunky and even confusing as Holum moves between personas...Holum has ferocious energy and can bring emotion and humor to the fantastic songs and the performance, but this reviewer overall found the piece to be lacking in cohesion and message."
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"Sometimes the various formats are woven together into a dazzling tour de force...For all its high-tech, cutting-edge flair, the true pleasure of 'The Wholehearted' is of an old-fashioned sort: Holum’s fearless, fierce, vulnerable performance...The script might benefit from more nuance...The play is so eager to show us the irony in Dee’s story, that it overplays its hand at times. But Dee’s tender recollections of Carmen form the beating heart of 'The Wholehearted.'"
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"The most intensive and honest character presentation I have seen in a long time...These two brilliant women obviously work together symbiotically, drawing on over a decade of experience...I am sure 'The Wholehearted' is on its way to win even more awards given the incredible talent of these two most creative people...I hope it returns to Los Angeles again soon to entice even more people into Dee Crosby's tale told with skill and heart by Suli Holum."
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"It is only 65 minutes in length, but co-director and playwright Deborah Stein asks a lot of questions about boxing, domestic abuse and unfulfilled desires. There's a lot to take in during the one-woman show. Yet, she accomplishes her goals with growing intensity...Occasionally, the use of video is excessive...Holum is so compelling to watch that her amorous speeches don't need the extra visuals...A well-crafted and cerebral story. Be prepared for a complicatedly dark character study."
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"One of the most effective aspects of this multimedia-rich show is the way it elucidates the sometimes blurred boundaries between her public and private personas...The two pack a lot into the hourlong, time-hopping play, including country and rockabilly-inflected songs that Holum sings with a soulful passion...There are a lot of thematic threads here that can wind up feeling like loose strings...The play, though, nails the exploitive way Dee has been turned into a commercial product."
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"Although there’s a sag in the middle, the 65-minute, deliberately hectic piece runs at a 'Breaking News' clip. The quick nonlinear jumps are a strength and a weakness, since they gloss over key information, as if the audience already knew the story...'Wholehearted' has the feel of a work-in-progress, but an important one and definitely worth seeing for its myriad means of communication, and for Suli Holum’s boldly honest, quintuple-skilled performance."
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